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(U H r; 



OUR VANISHING 
WILD LIFE 

ITS 

EXTERMINATION AND PRESERVATION 



BY 
WILLIAM t/'HORNADAY, Sc.D 

DIRECTOR OF THE NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL PARK; 
AUTHOR OF "THE AMERICAN NATURAL HISTORY"; 
EX-PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN BISON SOCIETY 



WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



"Hew to the line! Let the chips fall where they will." — Old Exhortation. 
"Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice." — Othello. 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

19 13 



■>^' 



-i^^ 



Copyright, 1913, by 

WILLIAM T. HORNADAY 

First Publication, Jan, 1913. 



SPECIAL NOTICE 

For the benefit of the cause that this book 
represents, the author freely extends to all peri- 
odicals and lecturers the privilege of reproducing 
any of the maps and illustrations in this volume 
except the bird portraits, the white-tailed deer 
and antelope, and the maps and pictures specially 
copyrighted by other persons, and so recorded. 
This privilege does not cover reproductions in 
books, without special permission. 



(aiark& 3ffrma 

PRINTERS 

209 WEST 38TH STREET 

NEW YORK 



©CI.A332289 



1 

I 




FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT OF THE 

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF AUDUBON SOCIETIES, AND 

LIFE-LONG CHAMPION OF AMERICAN BIRDS 

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED BY 

A SINCERE ADMIRER 




"/ drink to him, he is not here, 
Yet I would guard his glory; 
A knight without reproach or fear 
Should live in song and story." 

—Walsh. 



FOREWORD 



The preservation of animal and plant life, and of the general beauty 
of Nature, is one of the foremost duties of the men and women of to-day. 
It is an imperative duty, because it must be performed at once, for other- 
wise it will be too late. Every possible means of preservation, — senti- 
mental, educational and legislative, — must be employed. 

The present warning issues with no uncertain sound, because this 
great battle for preservation and conservation cannot be won by gentle 
tones, nor by appeals to the aesthetic instincts of those who have no sense 
of beauty, or enjoyment of Nature. It is necessary to sound a loud alarm, 
to present the facts in very strong language, backed up by irrefutable 
statistics and by photographs which tell no lies, to estabhsh the law and 
enforce it if needs be with a bludgeon. 

This book is such an alarm call. Its forceful pages remind me of the 
sounding of the great bells in the watch-towers of the cities of the Middle 
Ages which called the citizens to arms to protect their homes, their liber- 
ties and their happiness. It is undeniable that the welfare and happiness 
of our own and of all future generations of Americans are at stake in 
this battle for the preservation of Nature against the selfishness, the 
ignorance, or the cruelty of her destroyers. 

We no longer destroy great works of art. They are treasured, and 
regarded as of priceless value; but we have yet to attain the state of 
civilization where the destruction of a glorious work of Nature, whether 
it be a cliff, a forest, or a species of mammal or bird, is regarded with 
equal abhorrence. The whole earth is a poorer place to live in when a 
colony of exquisite egrets or birds of paradise is destroyed in order that 
the plumes may decorate the hat of some lady of fashion, and ultimately 
find their way into the rubbish heap. The people of all the New England 
States are poorer when the ignorant whites, foreigners, or negroes of our 
southern states destroy the robins and other song birds of the North 
for a mess of pottage. 

Travels through Europe, as well as over a large part of the North 
American continent, have convinced me that nowhere is Nature being 
destroyed so rapidly as in the United States. Except within our con- 
servation areas, an earthly paradise is being turned into an earthly 
hades; and it is not savages nor primitive men who are doing this, but 
men and women who boast of their civilization. Air and water are 
polluted, rivers and streams serve as sewers and dumping grounds, forests 
are swept away and fishes are driven from the streams. Many birds are 
becoming extinct, and certain mammals are on the verge of extermina- 



viii FOREWORD 

tion. Vulgar advertisements hide the landscape, and in all that disfigures 
the wonderftd heritage of the beauty of Nature to-day, we Americans 
are in the lead. 

Fortunately the tide of destruction is ebbing, and the tide of con- 
servation is coming in. Americans are practical. Like all other northern 
peoples, they love money and will sacrifice much for it, but they are 
' also full of idealism, as well as of moral and spiritual energy. The in- 
fluence of the splendid body of Americans and Canadians who have 
turned their best forces of mind and language into literature and into 
political power for the conservation movement, is becoming stronger 
every day. Yet we are far from the point where the momentum of 
conservation is strong enough to arrest and roll back the tide of destruc- 
tion; and this is especially true with regard to our fast vanishing animal 
life. 

The facts and figures set forth in this volume will astonish all those 
lovers of Nature and friends of the animal world who are living in a 
false or imaginary sense of security. The logic of these facts is inexorable. 
As regards our birds and mammals, the failures of supposed protection 
in America — under a system of free shooting — are so glaring that we are 
confident this exposure will lead to sweeping reforms. The author of 
this work is no amateur in the field of • wild-life protection. His ideas 
concerning methods of reform are drawn from long and successful ex- 
perience. The states which are still behind in this movement may well 
give serious heed to his summons, and pass the new laws that are so 
urgently demanded to save the vanishing remnant. 

The New York Zoological Society, which is cooperating with many 
other organizations in this great movement, sends forth this work in 
the belief that there is no one who is more ardently devoted to the great 
cause or rendering more effective service in it than William T. Hornaday. 
We believe that this is a great book, destined to exert a world-wide 
influence, to be translated into other languages, and to arouse the de- 
fenders and lovers of our vanishing animal life before it is too late. 

Henry Fairfield Osborn, 
10 December, 1912. President of the New York Zoological Society 



PREFACE 

The writing of this book has taught me many things. Beyond ques- 
tion, we are exterminating our finest species of mammals, birds and 
fishes according to law ! 

I am appalled by the mass of evidence proving that throughout the 
entire United States and Canada, in every state and province, the ex- 
isting legal system for the preservation of wild life is fatally defective. 
There is not a single state in our country from which the killable game 
is not being rapidly and persistently shot to death, legally or illegally, 
very much more rapidly than it is breeding, with extermination for the 
most of it close in sight. This statement is not open to argument; for 
millions of men know that it is literally true. We are living in a fool's 
paradise. 

The rage for wild-life slaughter is far more prevalent to-day through- 
out the world than it was in 1872, when the buffalo butchers paved the 
prairies of Texas and Colorado with festering carcasses. From one end 
of our continent to the other, there is a restless, resistless desire to "kill, 
kill!'' 

I have been shocked by the accumulation of evidence showing that 
all over our country and Canada fully nine-tenths of our protective laws 
have practically been dictated by the killers of the game, and that in 
all save a very few instances the hunters have been exceedingly careful 
to provide "open seasons" for slaughter, as long as anv game remains 
to kill! 

And yet, the game of North America does not belong wholly and ex- 
clusively to the men who kill ! The other ninety-seven per cent of the People 
have vested rights in it, far exceeding those of the three per cent. Posterity 
has claims upon it that no honest man can ignore. 

I am now going to ask both the true sportsman and the people who 
do not kill wild things to awake, and do their plain duty in protecting 
and preserving the game and other wild life which belongs partly to us, 
but chiefly to those who come after us. Can they be aroused, before it 
is too late? 

The time to discuss tiresome academic theories regarding "bag limits " 
and different "open seasons" as being sufficient to preserve the game, 
has gone by! We have reached the point where the alternatives are 
long closed seasons or a gameless continent; and we must choose one or 
the other, speedily. A continent without wild life is like a forest with 
no leaves on the trees. 



X PREFACE 

The great increase in the slaughter of song birds for food, by the 
negroes and poor whites of the South, has become an unbearable scourge 
to our migratory birds, — the very birds on which farmers north and 
south depend for protection from the insect hordes, — the very birds 
that are most near and dear to the people of the North. Song-bird 
slaughter is growing and spreading, with the decrease of the game birds ! 
It is a matter that requires instant attention and stern repression. At 
the present moment it seems that the only remedy lies in federal pro- 
tection for all migratory birds, — because so many states will not do 
their duty. 

We are weary of witnessing the greed, selfishness and cruelty of 
"civilized" man toward the wild creatures of the earth. We are sick 
of tales of slaughter and pictures of carnage. It is time for a sweeping 
Reformation; and that is precisely what we now demand. 

I have been a sportsman myself; but times have changed, and we 
rnust change also. When game was plentiful, I believed that it was 
right for men and boys to kill a limited amount of it for sport and for 
the table. But the old basis has been swept away by an Army of De- 
struction that now is almost beyond all control. We must awake, and 
arouse to the new situation, face it like men, and adjust our minds to 
the new conditions. The three million gunners of to-day must no longer 
expect or demand the same generous hunting privileges that were right 
for hunters fifty years ago, when game was fifty times as plentiful as it 
is now and there was only one killer for every fifty now in the field. 

The fatalistic idea that bag-limit laws can save the game is to-day 
the curse of all our game birds, mammals and fishes! It is a fraud, a 
delusion and a snare. That miserable fetich has been worshipped much 
too long. Our game is being exterminated, everywhere, by blind insist- 
ence upon "open seasons," and solemn reliance upon "legal bag-limits." 
If a majority of the people of America feel that so long as there is any 
game alive there must be an annual two months or four months open 
season for its slaughter, then assuredly we soon will have a gameless 
continent. 

The only thing that will save the game is by stopping the killing of it ! 
In establishing and promulgating this principle, the cause of wild-life 
protection greatly needs three things: money, labor, and publicity. With 
the first, we can secure the second and third. But can we get it, — 
and get it in time to save f 

This volume is in every sense a contribution to a Cause ; and as such 
it ever will remain. I wish the public to receive it on that basis. So much 
important material has drifted straight to it from other hands that this 
unexpected aid seems to the author like a good omen. 

The manuscript has received the benefit of a close and critical read- 
ing and correcting by my comrade on the firing-line and esteemed friend, 
Mr. Madison Grant, through which the text was greatly improved. But 
for the splendid encouragement and assistance that I have received from 



PREFACE xi 

him and from Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn the work involved would 
have borne down rather heavily. 

The four chapters embracing the "New Laws Needed; A Roll-Call of 
the States," were critically inspected, corrected and brought down to 
date by Dr. T. S. Palmer, our highest authority on the game laws of the 
Nation and the States. For this valuable service the author is deeply 
grateful. Of course the author is alone responsible for all the opinions 
and conclusions herein recorded, and for all errors that appear outside 
of quotations. 

I trust that the Reader will kindly excuse and forget all the typo- 
graphic and clerical errors that may have escaped me in the rush that 
had to be made against Time. 

University Heights, New York, W. T. H. 

December 1, 1912.. 



1 



CONTENTS 

Part I. — Extermination 

Chapter Page 

I. — Former Abundance of Wild Life 1 

II. — Extinct Species of North American Birds 7 

III. — The Next Candidates for Oblivion 17 

IV. — Extinct and Nearly Extinct Species of Mammals. 34 

V. — The Extermination of Species, State by State. ... 42 

VI. — The Regular Army of Destruction 53 

VII. — The Guerrillas of Destruction 63 

VIII. — The Unseen Foes of Wild Life 73 

IX. — Destruction of Wild Life by Diseases 82 

X. — Destruction of Wild Life by the Elements 88 

XI. — Slaughter of Song-Birds by Italians 94 

XIT. — Destruction of Song-Birds by Southern Negroes 

AND Poor Whites 105 

XIII. — Extermination of Birds for Women's Hats 114 

XIV. — The Bird Tragedy on Laysan Island 137 

XV. — Unfair Firearms and Shooting Ethics 143 

XVI. — The Present and Future of North American Big 

Game— 1 156 

XVII. — The Present and Future of North American Big 

Game— II 171 

XVIII. — The Present and Future of African Game 181 

XIX. — The Present and Future of Game in Asia 188 

XX. — Destruction of Birds in the Far East. By C. 

William Beebe 195 

XXI. — The vSavage Viewpoint of the Gunner 203 



Part II. — Preservation 

XXII. — Our Annual Losses by Insects. 208 

XXIII. — The Economic Value of Birds 213 

XXIV. — Game and Agriculture: Deer as a Food Supply. . . 234 



CONTENTS xiii 

Chapter Page 

XXV. — Law and Sentiment as Factors in Preservation . . 244 

XXVI. — The Army of the Defense 247 

XXVII. — How to Make a New Game Law 258 

XXVIII. — New Laws Needed: A Roll-Call of the States — I 265 

XXIX. — New Laws Needed: A Roll-Call of the States — II 275 

XXX. — New Laws Needed: A Roll-Call of the States — III 283 

XXXI. — New Laws Needed: A Roll-Call of the States — IV 292 

XXXII. — Need for a Federal Migratory Bird Law, No- 

Sale-of-Game Law, and Others 304 

XXXIII. — Bringing Back the Vanished Birds and Game 313 

XXXIV. — Introduced Species that Have Been Beneficial.. . 324 

XXXV. — Introduced Species that Have Become Pests 330 

XXXVI. — National and State Game Preserves and Bird 

Refuges 335 

XXXVII. — Game Preserves and Game Laws in Canada 350 

XXXVIII. — Private Game Preserves .358 

XXXIX. — British Game Preserves in Africa ^364 

XXL. — Breeding Game and Fur in Captivity 369 

XLI. — Teaching Wild-Life Protection to the Young. . . . 376 

XLII. — Ethics of Sportsmanship 382 

XLIII. — The Duty of American Zoologists to American 

Wild Life 386 

XLIV. — The Greatest Need of the Cause; and the Duty 

OF THE Hour 393 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Folly of 1857 and the Lesson of 1912 Frontispiece 

Shall We Leave Any One of Them Open ? 6 

Six Recently Exterminated North American Birds 9 

Sacred to the Memory of Exterminated Birds 15 

Whooping Cranes in the Zoological Park 19 

California Condor 22 

Primated Grouse, or "Prairie Chicken " 25 

Sage Grouse 26 

Snowy Egrets in the Mcllhenny Preserve 27 

Wood- Duck 29 

Gray Squirrel 32 

Skeleton of a Rhytina 36 

Burghell's Zebra 37 

Thylacine, or Tasmanian Wolf 38 

West Indian Seal 39 

California Elephant Seal 40 

The Regular Army of Destruction 55 

G. O. Shields 58 

Two Gunners of Kansas City 61 

Why the Sandhill Crane is Becoming Extinct 62 

A Market Gunner at Work on Marsh Island 64 

Ruffed Grouse 65 

A Lawful Bag of Ruffed Grouse 66 

Snow Bunting 68 

A Hunting Cat and Its Victim 76 

Eastern Red Squirrel 79 

Cooper's Hawk 80 

Sharp-Shinned Hawk 81 

The Cat that Killed Fifty-eight Birds in One Year '. 81 

An Italian Roccolo on Lake Como 95 

Dead Song-Birds 104 

The Robin of the North 107 

The Mocking-Bird of the South 107 

Northern Robins Ready for Southern Slaughter 108 

Southern-Negro Method of Combing Out the Wild Life HI 

Beautiful and Curious Birds Destroyed for the Feather Trade — I . . 115 

Sixteen Hundred Hummingbirds at Two Cents Each 116 

Beautiful and Curious Birds Destroyed for the Feather Trade — II . 118 

Beautiful and Curious Birds — III 123 

Fight in England Against the Use of Plumage 128 



ILLUSTRATIONS xv 

Young Egrets, Unable to Fly, Starving 132 

Snow}' Egret Dead on Her Nest 132 

Miscellaneous Bird Skins, Eight Cents Each 135 

Laysan Albatrosses, Before the Great Slaughter 138 

Laysan Albatross Rookery, After the Great Slaughter 139 

Acres of Gull and Albatross Bones 140 

Shed Filled with Wings of Slaughtered Birds 141 

Four of the Seven Machine Guns 144 

The Champion Game-Slaughter Case 147 

Slaughtered According to Law 149 

A Letter that Tells its Own Story 151 

The " Sunday Gun" 154 

The Prong-Horned Antelope 160 

Hungry Elk in Jackson Hole 168 

The Wichita National Bison Herd 179 

Pheasant Snares 197 

Pheasant Skins Seized at Rangoon 198 

Deadfall Traps in Burma 199 

One Morning's Catch of Trout near Spokane 205 

The Cut-Worm 209 

The Gypsy Moth 211 

Downy Woodpecker 214 

Baltimore Oriole 217 

Nighthawk 218 

Purple Martin 219 

Bob- White 221 

Rose-Breasted Grosbeak 223 

Barn Owl 225 

Golden- Winged Woodpecker 227 

Kildeer Plover 230 

Jacksnipe 230 

A Food Supply of White-Tailed Deer 235 

White-Tailed Deer 239 

Notable Protectors of Wild Life: Madison Grant, Henry Fairfield 

Osborn, John F. Lacey, and WilHam Dutcher 249 

Notable Protectors; Forbush, Pearson, Burnham, Napier 251 

Notable Protectors: PhilHps, Kalbfus, Mcllhenny, Ward 255 

Band-Tailed Pigeon 273 

Six Wild Chipmunks Dine with Mr. Loring 315 

Chickadee, Tamed 316 

Chipmunk, Tamed 316 

Object Lesson in Bringing Back the Ducks 317 

Gulls and Terns of Our Coast 321 

Egrets and Herons in Sanctuary on Marsh Island 363 

Bird Day at Carrick, Pa 379 

Distributing Bird Boxes and Fruit Trees 381 



MAPS 



The Wilderness of North America 155 

Former and Existing Ranges of the Elk 164 

Map Showing the Disappearance of the Lion . 183 

States and Provinces Requiring Resident Licenses 303 

Eighteen States Prohibit the Sale of Game 307 

Map Used in Campaign for Bayne Law 309 

United States National Game Preserves 339 

Bird Reservations on the Gtdf Coast and Florida 349 

Marsh Island and Adjacent Preserves 361 

Most Important Game Preserves of Africa 366 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

PART I. EXTERMINATION 

CHAPTER I 
THE FORMER ABUNDANCE OF WILD LIFE 

" By my labors my vineyard flourished. But Ahab came. Alas! for Nahotli." 

In order that the American people may correctly understand and 
judge the question of the extinction or preservation of our wild life, it 
is necessary to recall the near past. It is not necessary, however, to go 
far into the details of history; for a few quick glances at a few high 
points will be quite sufficient for the purpose in view. 

Any man who reads the books which best tell the story of the 
development of the American colonies of 1712 into the American nation 
of 1912, and takes due note of the wild-life features of the tale, will say 
without hesitation that when the American people received this land 
from the bountiful hand of Nature, it was endowed with a magnificent 
and all-pervading supply of valuable wild creatures. The pioneers and 
the early settlers were too busy even to take due note of that fact, or to 
comment upon it, save in very fragmentary ways. 

Nevertheless, the wild-life abundance of early American days 
survived down to so late a period that it touched the lives of millions of 
people now living. Any man 55 years of age who when a boy had a taste 
for "hunting," — for at that time there were no "sportsmen" in America, 
— will remember the flocks and herds of wild creatures that he saw. and 
which made upon his mind many indelible impressions. 

"Abundance" is the word with which to describe the original animal 
life that stocked our country, and all North America, only a short half- 
century ago. Throughout every state, on every shore-line, in all the 
millions of fresh water lakes, ponds and rivers, on every mountain range, 
in every forest, and even on every desert, the wild flocks and herds held 
sway. It was impossible to go beyond the settled haunts of civilized 
man and escape them. 

It was a full century after the complete settlement of New England 
and the Virginia colonies that the wonderful big-game fauna of the great 
plains and Rocky Mountains was really discovered; but the bison 



2 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

millions, the antelope millions, the mule deer, the mountain sheep and 
mountain goat were there, all the time. In the early days, the millions 
of pinnated grouse and quail of the central states attracted no serious 
attention from the American people-at-large ; but they lived and flour- 
ished just the same, far down in the seventies, when the greedy market 
gunners systematically slaughtered them, and barreled them up for "the 
market," while the foolish farmers calmly permitted them to do it. 

We obtain the best of our history of the former abundance of North 
American wild life first from the pages of Audubon and Wilson; next, 
from the records left by such pioneers as Lewis and Clark, and last from 
the testimony of living men. To all this we can, many of us, add observa- 
tions of our own. 

To me the most striking fact that stands forth in the story of American 
wild life one hundred years ago is the wide extent and thoroughness of 
its distribution. Wide as our country is, and marvelous as it is in the 
diversity of its climates, its soils, its topography, its flora, its riches 
and its poverty. Nature gave to each square mile and to each acre a 
generous quota of wild creatures, according to its ability to maintain 
living things. No pioneer ever pushed so far, or into regions so difficult 
or so remote, that he did not find awaiting him a host of birds and beasts. 
Sometimes the pioneer was not a good hunter; usually he was a stupid 
fisherman; but the "game" was there, nevertheless. The time was 
when every farm had its quota. 

The part that the wild life of America played in the settlement and 
development of this continent was so far-reaching in extent, and so 
enormous in potential value, that it fairly staggers the imagination. 
From the landing of the Pilgrims down to the present hour the wild game 
has been the mainstay and the resource against starvation of the path- 
finder, the settler, the prospector, and at times even the railroad-builder. 
In view of what the bison millions did for the Dakotas, Montana, Wyom- 
ing, Kansas and Texas, it is only right and square that those states 
should now do something for the perpetual preservation of the bison 
species and all other big game that needs help. 

For years and years, the antelope millions of the Montana and Wyo- 
ming grass-lands fed the scout and Indian-fighter, freighter, cowboy and 
surveyor, ranchman and sheep-herder; but thus far I have yet to hear of 
one Western state that has ever spent one penny directly for the pre- 
servation of the antelope ! And to-day we are in a hand-to-hand fight 
in Congress, and in Montana, with the Wool-Growers Association, which 
maintains in Washington a keen lobbyist to keep aloft the tariff on wool, 
and prevent Congress from taking 15 square miles of grass lands on Snow 
Creek, Montana, for a National Antelope Preserve. All that the wool- 
growers want is the entire earth, all to themselves. Mr. McClure, the 
Secretary of the Association says: 

' ' The proper place in which to preserve the big game of the West is 
in city parks, where it can be protected." 



FORMER ABUNDANCE 3 

To the colonist of the East and pioneer of the West, the white-tailed 
deer was an ever present help in time of trouble. Without this omni- 
present animal, and the supply of good meat that each white flag repre- 
sented, the commissariat difficulties of the settlers who won the country 
as far westward as Indiana would have been many times greater than 
they were. The backwoods Pilgrim's progress was like this: 

Trail, deer; cabin, deer; clearing; bear, corn, deer; hogs, deer; 
cattle, wheat, independence. 

And yet, how many men are there to-day, out of our ninety millions 
of Ainericans and pseud o- Americans, who remember with any feeling 
of gratitude the part played in American history by the white-tailed 
deer? Very few! How many Americans are there in our land who novv* 
preserve that deer for sentimental reasons, and because his forbears were 
nation-builders? As a matter of fact, are there any? 

On ever}^ eastern pioneer's monument, the white-tailed deer should 
figure; and on those of the Great West, the bison and the antelope should 
be cast in enduring bronze, ''lest we forget!'' 

The game birds of America played a different part from that of the 
deer, antelope and bison. In the early days, shotguns were few, and shot 
was scarce and dear. The wild turkey and goose were the smallest birds 
on which a rifleman could afford to expend a bullet and a whole charge of 
powder. It was for this reason that the deer, bear, bison, and elk dis- 
appeared from the eastern United States while the game birds yet re- 
mained abundant. With the disappearance of the big game came the 
fat steer, hog and hominy, the wheat-field, fruit orchard and poultry 
galore. 

The game birds of America, as a class and a mass, have not been 
swept away to ward off starvation or to rescue the perishing. Even back 
in the sixties and seventies, very, very few men of the North thought of 
killing prairie chickens, ducks and quail, snipe and woodcock, in order to 
keep the hunger wolf from the door. The process was too slow and un- 
certain; and besides, the really-poor man rarely had the gun and am- 
munition. Instead of attempting to live on birds, he hustled for the 
staple food products that the soil of his own farm could produce. 

First, last and nearly all the time, the game birds of the United States 
as a whole, have been sacrificed on the altar of Rank Luxury, to tempt 
appetities that were tired of fried chicken and other farm delicacies. 
To-day, even the average poor man hunts birds for the joy of the outing, 
and the pampered epicures of the hotels and restaurants buy game birds, 
and eat small portions of them, solely to tempt jaded appetites. If 
there is such a thing as "class" legislation, it is that which permits a 
few sordid market-shooters to slaughter the birds of the whole people in 
order to sell them to a few epicures. 

The game of a state belongs to the whole people of the state. The 
Supreme Court of the United States has so decided. (Geer vs. Con- 
necticut). If it is abundant, it is a valuable asset. The great value of 
the game birds of America lies not in their meat pounds as they lie upon 



4 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

the table, but in the temptation they annually put before milHons of 
field- weary farmers and desk- weary clerks and merchants to get into their 
beloved hunting togs, stalk out into the lap of Nature, and say "Begone, 
dull Care!" 

And the inan who has had a fine day in the painted woods, on the 
bright waters of a duck-haunted bay, or in the golden stubble of Sep- 
tember, can fill his day and his soul with six good birds just as well as 
with sixty. The idea that in order to enjoy a fine day in the open a man 
must kill a wheel-barrow load of birds, is a mistaken idea; and if ob- 
stinately adhered to, it becomes vicious! The Outing in the Open is the 
thing, — not the blood-stained feathers, nasty viscera and Death in the 
game-bag. One quail on a fence is worth more to the world than ten in 
a bag. 

The farmers of America have, by their own supineness and lack of 
foresight, permitted the slaughter of a stock of game birds which, had it 
been properly and wisely conserved, would have furnished a good annual 
shoot to every farming man and boy of sporting instincts through the 
past, right down to the present, and far beyond. They have allowed 
millions of dollars worth of their birds to be coolly snatched away from 
them by the greedy market-shooters. 

There is one state in America, and so far as I know only one, in which 
there is at this moment an old-time abundance of game-bird life. That 
is the state of Louisiana. The reason is not so very far to seek. For the 
birds that do not migrate, — quail, wild turkeys and doves, — the cover 
is yet abundant. For the migratory game birds of the Mississippi Valley, 
Louisiana is a grand central depot, with terminal facilities that are un- 
surpassed. Her reedy shores, her vast marshes, her long coast line and 
abundance of food furnish what should be not only a haven but a heaven 
for ducks and geese. After running the gauntlet of guns all the way from 
Manitoba and Ontario to the Sunk Lands of Arkansas, the shores of the 
Gulf must seem like heaven itself. 

The great forests of Louisiana shelter deer, turkeys, and fur-bearing 
animals galore; and rabbits and squirrels abound. 

Naturally, this abundance of game has given rise to an extensive 
industry in shooting for the market. The "big interests" outside the 
state send their agents into the best game districts, often bringing in 
their own force of shooters. They comb out the game in enormous 
quantities, without leaving to the people of Louisiana any decent and 
fair quid-pro-quo for having despoiled them of their game and shipped a 
vast annual product outside, to create wealth elsewhere. 

At present, however, we are but incidentally interested in the short- 
sightedness of the people of the Pelican State. As a state of oldtime 
abundance in killable game, the killing records that were kept in the year 
1909-10 possess for us very great interest. They throw a startling search- 
light on the subject of this chapter, — the former abundance of wild life. 
^ From the records that with great pains and labor were gathered by 
the State Game Commission, and which were furnished me for use 



FORMER A B UNDA NCE 5 

here by President Frank M. Miller, we set forth this remarkable exhibit 
of old-fashion6d abundance in j^ame, a.d. 1909. 

Offical Record of Game Killed in Louisiana During the Season 
(12 Months) of 1909-10 

Birds 

Wild Ducks, sea and river 3,176,000 

Coots 280,740 

Geese and Brant 202,210 

Snipe, Sandpiper and Plover 606, GSf) 

Quail (Bob-White) 1,140,750 

Doves 310,660 

Wild Turkeys 2,219 



y 



Total numl:)er of game birds killed 5,719,214 

Mammals 

Deer 5,470 

Squirrels and Rabbits 690,270 

Total of game mammals 695,740 

Fur-bearing mammals 1,971,922 

Total of mammals 2,667,662 

Grand total of birds and mammals 8,386,S76 

Of the thousands of slaughtered robins, it would seem that no records 
exist. It is to be understood that the annual slaughter of wild life in 
Louisiana never before reached such a pitch as now. Without drastic 
measures, what will be the inevitable result? Does any man suppose 
that even the wild millions of Louisiana can long withstand such slaughter 
as that shown by the official figures given above ? It is wildly impossible. 

But the darkest hour is just before the dawn. At the session of the 
Louisiana legislature that was held in the spring of 1912, great improve- 
ments were made in the game laws of that state. The most important 
feature was the suppression of wholesale market hunting, by persons vvho 
are not residents of the state. A very limited amount of game may be 
sold and served as food in public places, but the restrictions placed upon 
this traffic are so effective that they will vastly reduce the annual 
slaughter. In other respects, also, the cause of wild life protection gained 
much; for which great credit is due to Mr. Edward A. Mcllhenny. 

It is the way of Americans to feel that because game is abundant in 
a given place at a given time, it always will be abundant, and may there- 
fore be slaughtered without limit. That was the case last winter in 
California during the awful slaughter of band-tailed pigeons, as will be 
noted elsewhere. 

It is time for all men to be told in the plainest terms that there never 
has existed, anywhere in historic times, a volume of wild life so great that 
civilized man could not quickly exterminate it by his methods of de- 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 




SHALL WE LEAVE ANY ONE OP THEM OPEN? 



struction. Lift the veil and look at the stories of the bison, the passenger 
pigeon, the wild ducks and shore birds of the Atlantic coast, and the 
fur-seal. 

As reasoning beings, it is our duty to heed the lessons of history, and 
not rush blindly on until we perpetrate a continent destitute of wild life. 



CHAPTER II 

EXTINCT SPECIES OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS 

For educated, civilized Man to exterminate a valuable wild species 
of living things is a crime. It is a crime against his own children, and 
posterity. 

No man has a right, either moral or legal, to destroy or squander an 
inheritance of his children that he holds for them in trust. And man, 
the wasteful and greedy spendthrift that he is, has not created even the 
humblest of the species of birds, mammals and fishes that adorn and 
enrich this earth. " The earth is THE LORD'S, and the fulness thereof !" 
With all his wisdom, man has not evolved and placed here so much as a 
ground-squirrel, a sparrow or a clam. It is true that he has juggled with 
the wild horse and sheep, the goats and the swine, and produced some 
hardy breeds that can withstand his abuse without going down before it ; 
but as for species, he has not yet created and placed here even so much 
as a protozoan. 

The wild things of this earth are not ours, to do with as we please. 
They have been given to us in trust, and we must account for them to 
the generations which will come after us and audit our accounts. 

But man, the shameless destroyer of Nature's gifts, blithely and 
persistently exterminates one species after another. Fully ten per cent 
of the human race consists of people who will lie, steal, throw rubbish 
in parks, and destroy forests and wild life whenever and wherever they 
can do so without being stopped by a policemen and a club. These are 
hard words, but they are absolutely true. From ten per cent (or more) 
of the human race, the high moral instinct which is honest without com- 
pulsion is absent. The things that seemingly decent citizens, — men pos- 
ing as gentlemen, — will do to wild game when they secure great chances 
to slaughter, are appalling. I could fill a book of this size with cases 
in point. 

To-day the women of England, Europe and elsewhere are directly 
promoting the extermination of scores of beautiful species of wild birds 
by the devilish persistence with which they buy and wear feather orna- 
-ments made of their plumage. They are just as mean and cruel as the 
truck-driver who drives a horse with a sore shoulder and beats him on 
the street. But they do it! And appeals to them to do otherwise they 
laugh to scorn, saying, "I will wear what is fashionable, when I please 
and where I please!" As a famous bird protector of England has just 
written me, " The women of the smart set are beyond the reach of appeal 
or protest." 



8 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

To-day, the thing that stares me in the face every waking hour, like 
a grisly spectre with bloody fang and claw, is the extermination of species. 
To me, that is a horrible thing. It is wholesale murder, no less. It is 
capital crime, and a black disgrace to the races of civilized mankind. 
I say "civilized mankind," because savages don't do it! 

There are three kinds of extermination: 

The practical extermination of a species means the destruction of its 
members to an extent so thorough and widespread that the species 
disappears from view, and living specimens of it can not be found by 
seeking for them. In North America this is to-day the status of the 
whooping crane, upland plover, and several other species. If any in- 
dividuals are living, they will be met with only by accident. 

The absolute extermination of a species means that not one individual 
of it remains alive. Judgment to this effect is based upon the lapse of 
time since the last living specimen was observed or killed. When five 
years have passed without a living "record " of a wild specimen, it is time 
to place a species in the class of the totally extinct. 

Extermination in a wild state means that the only living representa- 
tives are in captivity or otherwise under protection. This is the case of 
the heath hen and David's deer, of China. The American bison is saved 
from being wholly extinct as a wild animal by the remnant of about 
300 head in northern Athabasca, and 49 head in the Yellow-stone Park. 

It is a serious thing to exterminate a species of any of the vertebrate 
animals. There are probably millions of people who do not realize that 
civilized ( ! ) man is the most persistently and wickedly wasteful of all the 
predatory animals. The lions, the tigers, the bears, the eagles and hawks, 
serpents, and the fish-eating fishes, all live by destroying life; but they 
kill only what they think they can consume. If something is by chance 
left over, it goes to satisfy the hunger of the humbler creatures of prey. 
In a state of nature, where wild creatures prey upon wild creatures, such a 
thing as wanton, wholesale and utterly wasteful slaughter is almost unknown! 

When the wild mink, weasel and skunk suddenly finds himself in the 
midst of scores of man's confined and helpless domestic fowls, or his 
caged gulls in a zoological park, an unusual criminal passion to murder 
for the joy of killing sometimes seizes the wild animal, and great slaughter 
is the result. 

From the earliest historic times, it has been the way of savage man, 
red, black, brown and yellow, to kill as the wild animals do, — only what 
he can use, or thinks he can use. The Cree Indian impounded small herds, 
of bison, and sometimes killed from 100 to 200 at one time; but it was 
to make sure of having enough meat and hides, and because he expected 
to use the product. I think that even the worst enemies of the plains 
Indians hardly will accuse them of killing large numbers of bison, elk or 
deer merely for the pleasure of seeing them fall, or taking only their teeth. 

It has remained for the wolf, the sheep-killing dog and civilized man 
to make records of wanton slaughter which puts them in a class together, 





^if/''ir%;-\^^l^Mli— 




SIX RECENTLY EXTERMINATED NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS 
Great Auk Labrador Duck 

Eskimi) Curlew Pallas Cormorant 

Passenger Pigeon Carolina Parrakeet 



10 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

and quite apart from other predatory animals. When a man can kill 
bison for their tongues alone, bull elk for their "tusks" alone, and shoot 
a whole colony of hippopotami, — actually damming a river with their 
bloated and putrid carcasses, all untouched by the knife, — the men who 
do such things must be classed with the cruel wolf and the criminal dog. 

It is now desirable that we should pause in our career of destruction 
long enough to look back upon what we have recently accomplished in 
the total extinction of species, and also note what we have blocked out 
for the immediate future. Here let us erect a monument to the dead 
species of our own times. 

It is to be doubted whether, up to this hour, any man has made a list 
of the species of North American birds that have become extinct during 
the past sixty years. The specialists have no time to spare from their 
compound differential microscopes, and the bird-killers are too busy 
with shooting, netting and clubbing to waste any time on such trifles as 
exterminated species. What does a market-shooter care about birds 
that can not be killed a second time ? As for the farmers, they are so busy 
raising hogs and prices that their best friends, the birds, get scant atten- 
tion from them, — until a hen-hawk takes a chicken! 

Down South, the negroes and poor whites may slaughter robins for 
food by the ten thousand ; but does the northern farmer bother his head 
about a trifle of that kind? No, indeed. Will he contribute any real 
money to help put a stop to it? Ask him j^ourself. 

Let us pause long enough to reckon up some of our expenditures in 
species, and in millions of individuals. Let us set down here, in cold 
blood, a list of the species of our own North American birds that have 
been totally exterminated in our own times. After that we will have 
something to say about other species that soon will be exterminated ; and 
the second task is much greater than the first. 

Roll Call of the Dead Species of American Birds 

The Great Auk, — Plautus impennis, (Linn.), was a sea-going 
diving bird about the size of a domestic goose, related to the guillemots, 
murres and puffins. For a bird endowed only with flipper-like wings, 
and therefore absolutely unable to fly, this species had an astonishing 
geographic range. It embraced the shores of northern Europe to 
North Cape, southern Greenland, southern Labrador, and the Atlantic 
coast of North America as far south as Massachusetts. Some say, "as 
far south as Massachusetts, the Carolinas and Florida," but that is a 
large order, and I leave the A.O.U. to prove that if it can. In the life 
history of this bird, a great tragedy was enacted in 1800 by sailors, on 
Funk Island, north of Newfoundland, where men were landed by a ship, 
and spent several months slaughtering great auks and trying out their 
fat for oil. In this process, the bodies of thousands of auks were burned 
as fuel, in working up the remains of tens of thousands of others. 



EXTINCT SPECIES 11 

On Funk Island, a favorite breeding-place, the great auk was ex- 
terminated in 1840, and in Iceland in 1844. Many natives ate this 
bird with relish, and being easily captured, either on land or sea, the 
commercialism of its day soon obliterated the species. The last living 
specimen was seen in 1852, and the last dead one was picked up in Trinity 
Bay, Ireland, in 1853. There are about 80 mounted and unmounted 
skins in existence, four skeletons, and quite a number of eggs. An egg 
is worth about $1200 and a good mounted skin at least double that sum. 

The Labrador Duck, — Camptorhynchus lahradoricus , (Gmel.). — 
This handsome sea-duck, of a species related to the eider ducks of arctic 
waters, became totally extinct about 1875, before the scientific world 
even knew that its existence was threatened. With this species, the exact 
and final cause of its extinction is to this day unknown. It is not at all 
probable, however, that its unfortunate blotting out from our bird fauna 
was due to natural causes, and when the truth becomes known, it is very 
probable that the hand of man will be revealed. 

The Labrador duck bred in Labrador, and once frequented our 
Atlantic coast as far south as Chesapeake Bay; but it is said that it never 
was very numerous, at least during the twenty-five years preceding its 
disappearance. About thirty-five skins and mounted museum specimens 
are all that remain to prove its former existence, and I think there is not 
even one skeleton. 

The Pallas Cormorant, — Carbo perspicillatus, (Pallas).- — In 1741, 
when the Russian explorer, Commander Bering, discovered the Bering 
or Commander Islands, in the far-north Pacific, and landed upon them, 
he also discovered this striking bird species. Its plumage both above and 
below was a dark metallic green, with blue iridescence on the neck and 
purple on the shoulders. A pale ring of naked skin around each eye sug- 
gested the Latin specific name of this bird. The Pallas cormorant became 
totally extinct, through causes not positively known, about 1852. 

The Passenger Pigeon, — Ectoptstes migratoria, (Linn.). — We 
place this bird in the totally-extinct class, not only because it is extinct 
in a wild state, but only one solitary individual, a twenty-year-old 
female in the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens, now remains alive. One 
living specimen and a few skins, skeletons and stuffed specimens are all 
that remain to show for the uncountable millions of pigeons that swarmed 
over the United vStates, only yesterday as it were! 

There is no doubt about where those millions have gone. They went 
down and out by systematic, wholesale slaughter for the market and the 
pot, before the shotguns, clubs and nets of the earliest American pot- 
hunters. Wherever they nested they were slaughtered. 

It is a long and shameful story, but the grisly skeleton of its Michigan 
chapter can be set forth in a few words. In 1869, from the town of Hart- 
ford, Mich., three car loads of dead pigeons were shipped to market each 
day for forty days, making a total of 1 1,880,000 birds. It is recorded that 
another Michigan town marketed 15,840,000 in two years. (See Mr. 
W. B. Mershon's book, "The Passenger Pigeon.") 



12 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Alexander Wilson, the pioneer American ornithologist, was the man 
who seriously endeavored to estimate by computations the total number 
of passenger pigeons in one flock that was seen by him. Here is what he 
has said in his "American Ornithology": 

"To form a rough estimate of the daily consumption of one of these 
immense flocks, let us first attempt to calculate the numbers of that above 
mentioned, as scenin passing between Frankfort and the Indiana territory. 
If we suppose this column to have been one mile in breadth (and I believe 
it to have been much more) and that it moved at the rate of one mile in 
a minute, four hours, the time it continued passing, would make its whole 
length two hundred and forty miles. Again, supposing that each square 
yard of this moving body comprehended three pigeons ; the square yards 
in the whole space multiplied by three would give 2,230,272,000 pigeons! 
An almost inconceivable multitude, and yet probably far below the actual 
amount." 

:J: H< sK si: ;[; 

"Happening to go ashore one charming afternoon, to purchase some 
milk at a house that stood near the river, and while talking with the 
people within doors, I was suddenly struck with astonishment at a loud 
rushing roar, succeeded by instant darkness, which, on the first moment, 
I took for a tornado about to overwhelm the house and every thing around 
in destruction. The people observing my surprise, coolly said, ' It is 
only the pigeons!' On running out I beheld (a flock, thirty or forty 
yards in width, sweeping along very low, between the house and the 
mountain or height that formed the second bank of the river. These 
continued passing for more than a quarter of an hour, and at length 
varied their bearing so as to pass over the mountains, behind which they 
disappeared before the rear came up. 

' ' In the Atlantic States, though they never appear in .such unparalleled 
multitudes, they are sometiines very numerous; and great havoc is then 
made amongst them with the gun, the clap-net, and various other im- 
plements of destruction. As soon as it is ascertained in a town that the 
pigeons are flying numerously in the neighborhood, the gunners rise 
en masse; the clap-nets are spread out on suitable situations, commonly 
on an open height in an old buckwheat field, four or five live pigeons, 
with their eyelids sewed tip* are fastened on a movable stick, a small 
hut of branches is fitted up for the fowler at the distance of forty or fifty 
yards. By the pulling of a string, the stick on which the pigeons rest is 
alternately elevated and depressed, which produces a fltittering of their 
wings, similar to that of birds alighting. This being perceived by the 
passing flocks, they descend with great rapidity, and finding corn, buck- 
wheat, etc, strewed about, begin to feed, and are instantly, by the pulling 
of a cord, covered by the net. In this manner ten, twenty, and even 
thirt}' dozen haxe been caught at one sweep. Meantime the air is 

*To-day, we think that the fowlers of the rocollos of northern Italy are ver\- cruel 
in their methods of catching song-birds wholesale for the market (chapter xi) ; but our 
own countrymen of Wilson's day were just as cruel in the method described above. 



EXTINCT SPECIES 13 

darkened with large bodies of them moving in various directions; the 

woods also swarm with them in search of acorns, and the thundering of 

musquetry is perpetual on all sides from morning to night. Wagon loads 

of them are poured into market, where they sell from fifty to twenty-five 

and even twelve cents per dozen; and pigeons become the order of the 

day at dinner, breakfast and supper, until the very name becomes 

sickening." 

***** 

The range of the passenger pigeon covered nearly the whole United 
States from the Atlantic coast westward to the Rocky Mountains. A 
few bold pigeons crossed the Rocky Mountains into Oregon, northern 
California and Washington, but only as "stragglers," few and far be- 
tween. The wide range of this bird was worthy of a species that existed 
in millions, and it was persecuted literally all along the line. The greatest 
slaughter was in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In 1848 Massa- 
chusetts gravely passed a law protecting the netters of wild pigeons from 
foreign interference! There was a fine of $10 for damaging nets, or 
frightening pigeons away from them. This was on the theory that the 
pigeons were so abundant they could not by any possibilit}^ ever become 
scarce, and that pigeon-slaughter was a legitimate industry. 

In 1867, the State of New York found that the wild pigeon needed 
protection, and enacted a law to that effect. The year 1868 was the last 
year in which great numbers of passenger pigeons nested in that vState. 
Eaton, in "The Birds of New York," said that "millions of birds occupied 
the timber along Bell's Run, near Ceres, Alleghany County, on the 
Pennsylvania line." 

In 1870, Massachusetts gave pigeons protection except during an 
"open season," and in 1878 Pennsylvania elected to protect pigeons on 
their nesting grounds. 

The passenger pigeon millions were destroyed so quickly, and so 
thoroughly en masse, that the American people utterly failed to com- 
prehend it, and for thirty years obstinately refused to believe that the 
species had been suddenly wiped off the map of North America. There 
was years of talk about the great flocks having "taken refuge in South 
America," or in Mexico, and being still in existence. There were surmises 
about their having all "gone out to sea," and perished on the briny deep. 

A thousand times, at least, wild pigeons have been "reported" as 
having been "seen." These rumors have covered nearly every northern 
state, the whole of the southwest, and California. For years and years 
we have been patiently writing letters to explain over and over that the 
band-tailed pigeon of the Pacific coast, and the red-billed pigeon of 
Arizona and the southwest are neither of them the passenger pigeon, 
and never can be. 

There was a long period wherein we believed many of the pigeon 
reports that came from the states where the birds once were most 
numerous; but that period has absolutely passed. During the past five 
years large cash rewards, aggregating about $5000, have been offered for 



14 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

the discovery of one nesting pair of genuine passenger pigeons. Many- 
persons have claimed this reward (of Professor C. F. Hodge, of Clark 
University, Worcester, Mass.), and many claims have been investigated. 
The results have disclosed many mourning doves, but not one pigeon. 
Now we understand that the quest is closed, and hope has been aban- 
doned. 

The passenger pigeon is a dead species. The last wild specimen (so 
we believe) that ever will reach the hands of man, was taken near Detroit, 
Michigan, on Sept. 14, 1908, and mounted by C. Campion. That is the 
one definite, positive record of the past ten years. 

The fate of this species should be a lasting lesson to the world at large. 
Any wild bird or mammal species can be exterminated by commerciali 
interests in twenty years time, or less. 

The Eskimo Curlew, — Nmnenius borealis, (Forst.). This valuable 
game bird once ranged all along the Atlantic coast of North America, 
and wherever found it was prized for the table. It preferred the fields 
and meadows to the shore lines, and was the companion of the plovers 
of the uplands, expecially the golden plover. "About 1872," says Mr. 
Forbush, "there was a great flight of these birds on Cape Cod and 
Nantucket. They were every where ; and enormous numbers were killed. 
They could be bought of boys at six cents apiece. Two men killed $300 
worth of these birds at that time." 

Apparently, that was the beginning of the end of the "dough bird," 
which was another name for this curlew. In 1908 Mr. G. H. Mackay 
stated that this bird and the golden plover had decreased 90 per cent 
in fifty years, and in the last ten years of that period 90 per cent of the 
remainder had gone. "Now (1908)," says Mr. Forbush, "ornithologists 
believe that the Eskimo curlew is practically extinct, as only a few 
specimens have been recorded since the beginning of the twentieth 
century." The very last record is of two specimens collected at Waco, 
York County, Nebraska, in March, 1911, and recorded by Mr. August 
Eiche. Of course, it is possible that other individuals may still survive; 
but so far as our knowledge extends, the species is absolutely dead. 



In the West Indies and the Guadeloupe Islands, five species of macaws 
and parrakeets have passed out without any serious note of their disap- 
pearance on the part of the people of the United States. It is at least time 
to write brief obituary notices of them. 

We are indebted to the Hon. Walter Rothschild, of Tring, England, 
for essential facts regarding these species as set forth in his sumptuous 
work "Extinct Birds". 

The Cuban Tricolored Macaw, — Ara tricolor, (Gm.). In 1875, 
when the author visited Cuba and the Isle of Pines, he was informed by 
Professor Poey that he was "about ten years too late" to find this fine 
species alive. It was exterminated for food purposes, about 1864, and 
only four specimens are known to be in existence. 



16 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Gosse's Macaw, — Ara gossei, (Roth.). — This species once in- 
habited the Island of Jamaica. It was exterminated about 1800, and so 
far as known not one specimen of it is in existence. 

Guadeloupe Macaw, — Ara guadeloupcnsis, (Clark). — All that is 
known of the life history of this large bird is that once it inhabited the 
Guadeloupe Islands. The date and history of its disappearance are both 
unknown, and there is not one specimen of it in existence. 

Yellow-Winged Green Parrot, — Amazona olivacea, (Gm.). — Of 
the history of this Guadeloupe species, also, nothing is known, and there 
appear to be no specimens of it in existence. 

Purple Guadeloupe Parrakeet, — Anodorhynchus purpurescens, 
(Rothschild). — This is another dead species, that once lived in the Guade- 
loupe Islands, and passed away silently and unnoticed at the time, leaving 
no records of its existence, and no specimens. 

The Carolina Parrakeet, — Conuropsis carolinensis, (Linn.), brings 
us down to the present moment. To this charming little green-and- 
yellow bird, we are in the very act of bidding everlasting farewell. Ten 
specimens remain alive in captivity, six of which are in the Cincinnati 
Zoological Garden, three are in the Washington Zoological Park and one 
is in the New York Zoological Park. 

Regarding wild specimens, it is possible that some yet remain, in 
some obscure and neglected corner of Florida; but it is extremely doubtful 
whether the world ever will find any of them alive. Mrs. Minnie Moore 
Willson, of Kissimee, Fla., reports the species as totally extinct in Florida. 
Unless we would strain at a gnat, we may just as well enter this species 
in the dead class; for there is no reason to hope that any more wild 
specimens ever will be found. 

The former range of this species embraced the whole southeastern 
and central United States. From the Gulf it extended to Albany, N. Y., 
northern Ohio and Indiana, northern Iowa, Nebraska, central Colorado 
and eastern Texas, from which it will be seen that once it was widely 
distributed. It was shot because it was destructive to fruit and for its 
plumage, and many were trapped alive, to be kept in captivity. I know 
that one colony, near the mouth of the Sebastian River, east coast of 
Florida, was exterminated in 1898 by a local hunter, and I regret to say 
that it was done in the hope of selling the living birds to a New York 
bird-dealer. By holding bags over the holes in which the birds were 
nesting, the entire colony, of about 16 birds, was caught. 

Everywhere else than in Florida, the Carolina parrakeet has long been 
extinct. In 1904 a flock of 13 birds was seen near Lake Okechobee; but 
in Florida many calamities can overtake a flock of birds in eight years. 
The birds in captivity are not breeding, and so far as perpetuation by 
them is concerned, they are only one remove from mounted museum 
specimens. This parrakeet is the only member of its order that ranged 
into the United States during our own times, and with its disappearance 
the Order Psittaciformes totally disappears from our country. 



CHAPTER III 
THE NEXT CANDIDATES FOR OBLIVION 

In the world of human beings, murder is the most serious of all crimes. 
To take from a man that which no one ever can restore to him, his life, 
is murder; and its penalty is the most severe of all penalties. 

There are circumstances under which the killing of a wild animal 
may be so wanton, so revolting and so utterly reprehensible that the act 
may justly be classed as murder. The man who kills a walrus from the 
deck of a steamer that he knows will not stop ; the man who wantonly 
killed the whole colony of hippopotami that Mr. Dugmore photographed 
in life ; the man who last winter shot bull elk in Wyoming for their two 
ugly and shapeless teeth, and the man who wantonly shot down a half- 
tame deer "for fun" near Carmel, Putnam County, New York, in the 
summer of 1912, — all were guilty of murdering wild animals. 

The murder of a wild animal species consists in taking from it that 
which man with all his cunning and all his preserves and breeding can 
not give back to it, — its God-given place in the ranks of Living Things. 
Where is man's boasted intelligence, or his sense of proportion, that 
every man does not see the monstrous moral obliquity involved in the 
destruction of a species ! 

If the beautiful Taj Mehal at Agra should be destroyed by vandals, 
the intelligent portion of humanity would be profoundly shocked, even 
though the hand of man could at will restore the shrine of sorrowing love. 
To-day the great Indian rhinoceros, certainly one of the most wonderful 
four-footed animals still surviving, is actually being exterminated; and 
even the people of India and England are viewing it with an indifference 
that is appalling. Of course there are among Englishmen a great many 
sportsmen and several zoologists who really care; but they do not con- 
stitute one-tenth of one per-cent of the men who ought to care ! 

In the museums, we stand in awe and wonder before the fossil skele- 
ton of the Megatherium, and the savants struggle to unveil its past, 
while the equally great and marvelous Rhinoceros indicus is being rushed 
into oblivion. We marvel at the fossil shell of the gigantic turtle called 
Collosochelys atlas, while the last living representatives of the gigantic 
land tortoises are being exterminated in the Galapagos Islands and the 
Sychelles, for their paltry oil and meat; and only one man (Hon. Walter 
Rothschild) is doing aught to save any of them in their haunts, where 
they can breed. The dodo of Mauritius was exterminated by swine, 
whose bipedal descendents have exterminated many other species since 
that time. 



18 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

A failure to appreciate either the beauty or the value of our living 
birds, quadrupeds and fishes is the hall-mark of arrested mental develop- 
ment and ignorance. The victim is not always to blame; but in this prac- 
tical world the cornerstone of legal jurisprudence is the inexorable prin- 
ciple that "ignorance of the law excuses no man." 

These pages are addressed to my countrymen, and the world at 
large, not as a reproach upon the dead Past which is gone beyond recall, 
but in the faint hope of somewhere and somehow arousing forces that 
will reform the Present and save the Futiire. The extermination of wild 
species that now is proceeding throughout the world, is a dreadful thing. 
It is not only injurious to the economy of the world, but it is a shame 
and a disgrace to the civilized portion of the human race. 

It is of little avail that I should here enter into a detailed description 
of each species that now is being railroaded into oblivion. The book- 
shelves of intelligent men and women are filled with beautiful and ade- 
quate books on birds and quadrupeds, wherein the status of each spe- 
cies may be determined, almost without effort. There is time and space 
only in which to notice the most prominent of the doomed species, and 
perhaps discuss a few examples by way of illustration. Here is a 

Partial List of North American Birds Threatened with 
Early Extermination 

Whooping Crane Pectoral Sandpiper 

Trumpeter Swan Black-Capped Petrel 

American Flamingo American Egret 

Roseate Spoonbill Snowy Egret 

Scarlet Ibis Wood Duck 

Long-Billed Curlew Band-Tailed Pigeon 

HUDSONIAN GODWIT HeATH HeN 

Upland Plover Sage Grouse 

Red-Breasted Sandpiper Prairie Sharp-Tail 

Golden Plover Pinnated Grouse 

DowiTCHER White-Tailed Kite 

WiLLET 

The Whooping Crane. — This splendid bird will almost certainly 
be the next North American species to be totally exterminated. It is 
the only new world rival of the numerous large and showy cranes of the 
old world; for the sandhill crane is not in the same class as the white, 
black and blue giants of Asia. We will part from our stately Grus ameri- 
canus with profound sorrow, for on this continent we ne'er shall see his 
like again. 

The well-nigh total disappearance of this species has been brought 
close home to us by the fact that there are less than half a dozen individ- 
uals alive in captivity, while in a wild state the bird is so rare as to be 
quite unobtainable. For example, for nearly five years an English gen- 



CANDIDATES FOR OBLIVION 



19 




WHOOPING CRANES IN THE ZOOLOGICAL PARK 

Very Soon this Species will Become Totally Extinct. 



tlemen has been offering $1,000 for a pair, and the most enterprising bird 
collector in America has been quite unable to fill the order. So far as 
our information extends, the last living specimen captured was taken 
six or seven years ago. The last wild birds seen and reported were 
observed by Ernest Thompson Seton, who saw five below Fort Mc- 
Murray, Saskatchewan, October 16th, 1907, and by John F. Ferry, who 
saw one at Big Quill Lake, Saskatchewan, in June, 1909. 

The range of this species once covered the eastern two-thirds of the 
continent of North America. It extended from the Atlantic coast to the 
Rocky Mountains, and from Great Bear Lake to Florida and Texas. 
Eastward of the Mississippi it has for twenty years been totally extinct, 
and the last specimens taken alive were found in Kansas and Nebraska. 

The Trumpeter Swan. — Six years ago this species was regarded as 
so nearly extinct that a doubting ornithological club of Boston refused 
to believe on hearsay evidence that the New York Zoological Park con- 
tained a pair of living birds, and a committee was appointed, to investi- 
gate in person, and report. Even at that time, skins were worth all the 
way from $100 to $150 each; and when swan skins sell at either of those 
figures it is because there are people who believe that the species either is 
on the verge of extinction, or has passed it. The pair referred to above 



20 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

was acquired in 1900. Since that time, Dr. Leonard C. Sanford pro- 
cured in 1910 two living birds from a bird dealer who obtained them on 
the coast of Virginia. We have done our utmost to induce our pair to 
breed, but without any further results than nest-building. 

The loss of the trumpeter swan (Olor americanus) will not be so 
great, nor felt so keenly, as the blotting out of the whooping crane. It 
so closely resembles the whistling swan that only an ornithologist can 
recognize the difference, a yellow spot on the side of the upper mandible, 
near its base. The whistling swan yet remains in fair numbers, but it is 
to be feared that soon it will go as the trumpeter has gone. 

The American Flamingo, Scarlet Ibis and Roseate Spoonbill are 
three of the most beautiful and curious water-haunting birds of the 
tropics. Once all three species inhabited portions of the southern United 
States ; but now all three are gone from our star-spangled bird fauna. 
The brilliant scarlet plumage of the flamingo and ibis, and the exquisite 
pink rose-color and white of the spoonbill naturally attracted the evil 
eyes of the "milliner's taxidermists" and other bird-butchers. From 
Florida these birds quickly vanished. The six great breeding colonies of 
Flamingoes on Andros Island, Bahamas, have been reduced to two, and 
from Prof. E. A. Goeldi, of the State Museum Goeldi, Para, Brazil, have 
come bitter complaints of the slaughter of scarlet ibises in South Amer- 
ica by plume-hunters in European pay. 

I know not how other naturalists regard the future of the three spe- 
cies named above, but my opinion is that unless the European feather 
trade is quickly stopped as to wild plumage, they are absolutely certain 
to be shot into total oblivion, within a very few years. The plumage of 
these birds has so much commercial value, for fishermen's flies as well as 
for women's hats, that the birds will be killed as long as their feathers 
can be sold and any birds remain alive. 

Zoologically, the flamingo is the most odd and interesting bird on the 
American continent except the emperor penguin. Its beak baffles de- 
scription, its long legs and webbed feet are a joke, its nesting habits are 
amazing, and its food habits the despair of most zoological-garden keep- 
ers. Millions of flamingos inhabit the shores of a number of small lakes 
in the interior of equatorial East Africa, but that species is not brilliant 
scarlet all over the neck and head, as is the case with our species. 

If the American flamingo, scarlet ibis and roseate spoonbill, one or 
all of them, are to be saved from total extinction, efforts must be made 
in each of the countries in which they breed and live. Their preserva- 
tion is distinctly a burden upon the countries of South America that lie 
eastward of the Andes, and on Yucatan, Cuba and the Bahamas. The 
time has come when the Government of the Bahama Islands should 
sternly forbid the killing of any more flamingos, on any pretext what- 
ever ; and if the capture of living specimens for exhibition purposes mili- 
tates against the welfare of the colonies, they should forbid that also. 

The Upland Plover, or "Bartramian Sandpiper." — Apparently 
this is the next shore-bird species that will follow the Eskimo curlew into 



CANDIDATES FOR OBLIVION 21 

oblivion. Four years ago, — a long period for a species that is on the edge 
of extermination, — Mr. E. H. Forbush* wrote of it as follows: 

"The Bartramian Sandpiper, commonly known as the Upland Plover, 
a bird which formerly bred on grassy hills all over the State and migrated 
southward along our coasts in great flocks, is in imminent danger of 
extirpation. A few still breed in Worcester and Berkshire Counties, or 
Nantucket, so there is still a nucleus which, if protected, may save the 
species. Five reports from localities where this bird formerly bred give 
it as nearing extinction, and four as ex.inct. This is one of the most use- 
ful of all birds in grass land, feeding largely on grasshoppers and cutworms. 
It is one of the finest of all birds for the table. An effort should be made 
at once to save this usefiil species." 

The Black-Capped Petrel, (Aestrelata hasitata). — This species is 
already recorded in the A. O. U. "Check list" as extinct; but it appears 
that this may not as yet be absolutely true. On January 1, 1912, a strange 
thing happened. A much battered and exhausted black-capped petrel 
was picked up alive in Central Park, New York, taken to the menagerie, 
and kept there during the few days that it survived. When it died it was 
sent to the American Museum ; and this may easily prove to be the last 
living record for that species. In reality, this species might as well be 
listed with those totally extinct. Formerly it ranged from the Antilles 
to Ohio and Ontario, and the causes of its blotting out are not yet defi- 
nitely known. 

This ocean-going bird once had a wide range overseas in the temper- 
ate areas of the North Atlantic. It is recorded from Ulster County, New 
York, New Hampshire, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia and Florida. It was 
about of the size of the common tern. 

The California Condor, (Gymnogyps calif ornianus) . — I feel that 
the existence of this species hangs on a very slender thread. This is due 
to its alarmingly small range, the insignificant number of individuals now 
living, the openness of the species to attack, and the danger of its ex- 
tinction by poison. Originally this remarkable bird, — the largest North 
American bird of prey, — ranged as far northward as the Columbia 
River, and southward for an unknown distance. Now its range is reduced 
to seven counties in southern California, although it is said to extend 
from Monterey Bay to Lower California, and eastward to Arizona. 

Regarding the present status and the future of this bird, I have been 
greatly disturbed in mind. When a unique and zoologically important 
species becomes reduced in its geographic range to a small section of a 
single state, it seems to me quite time for alarm. For some time I have 
counted this bird as one of those threatened with early extermination, 
and as I think with good reason. In view of the swift calamities that 
now seem able to fall on species like thunderbolts out of clear skies, and 
wipe them off the earth even before we know that such a fate is impend- 

*" Special Report on the Decrease of Certain Birds, and its Causes." — IMass. State 
Board of Agriculture, 1908. 



22 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 




CALIFORNIA CONDOR 
Now Living in the New York Zoological Park. 

ing, no species of seven-county distribution is safe. Any species that is 
limited to a few counties of a single state is liable to be wiped out in 
five years, by poison, or traps, or lack of food. 

On order to obtain the best and also the most conservative informa- 
tion regarding this species, I appealed to the Curator of the Museum of 
Verbetrate Zoology, of the University of California. Although written 
in the mountain wilds, I promptly received the valuable contribution 
that appears below. As a clear, precise and conservative survey of an 
important species, it is really a model document. 



The Status of the California Condor in 1912 
By Joseph Grinnell 

"To my knowledge, the California Condor has been definitely ob- 
served within the past five years in the following California counties: 
Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Monterey, Kern, 
and Tulare. In parts of Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and 
Kern counties the species is still fairly common, for a large bird, probably 
equal in numbers to the golden eagle in those regions that are suited to 



CANDIDATES FOR OBLIVION 23 

it. By suitable country I mean cattle-raising, mountainous territory, 
of which there are still vast areas, and which arc not likely to be put to 
any other use for a very long time, if ever, on account of the lack of water. 

"While in Kern County last April, I was informed by a reliable man 
who lives near the Tejon Rancho that he had counted twenty-five con- 
dors in a single day, since January 1 of the present year. These were on 
the Tejon Rancho, which is an enormous cattle range covering parts 
of the Tehachapi and San Emigdio Mountains. 

"Our present state law provides complete protection for the condor 
and its eggs; and the State Fish and Game Commission, in granting 
permits for collectors, always adds the phrase — ' except the California 
condor and its eggs.' I know of two special permits having been issued, 
but neither of these were used; that is, no 'specimens' have been taken 
since 1908, as far as I am aware. 

"In my travels about the state, I have found that practically every- 
one knows that the condor is protected. Still, there is always the hunt- 
ing element who do not hesitate to shoot anything alive and out of the 
ordinary, and a certain percentage of the condors are doubtless picked 
off each year by such criminals. It is possible, also, that the mercenary 
egg-collector continues to take his annual rents, though if this is done 
it is kept very quiet. It is my impression that the present fatalities from 
all sources are fully balanced by the natural rate of increase. 

"There is one factor that has militated against the condor more than 
any other one thing; namely, the restriction in its food source. Its 
forage range formerly included most of the great valleys adjacent to its 
mountain retreats. But now the valleys are almost entirely devoted to 
agriculture, and of course far more thickly settled than formerly. 

"The mountainous areas where the condor is making its last stand 
seem to me likely to remain adapted to the bird's existence for many 
years, — fifty years, if not longer. Of course, this is conditional upon the 
maintenance and enforcement of the present laws. There is also the 
enlightenment of public sentiment in regard to the preservation of wild 
life, which I believe can be depended upon. This is a matter of general 
education, which is, fortunately, and with no doubt whatever, progress- 
ing at a quite perceptible rate. 

"Yes; I should say that the condor has a fair chance to survive, in 
limited numbers. 

"Another bird which in my opinion is far nearer extinction than the 
condor, so far as California is concerned, is the white-tailed kite. This 
is a perfectly harmless bird, but one which harries over the marskes, 
where it has been an easy target for the idle duck-hunter. Then, too, 
its range was limited to the valley bottoms, where htmian settlement is 
increasingly close. I know of only two live pairs within the state last 
year ! 

"Finally, let me remark that the rate of increase of the California 
condor is not one whit less than that of the band-tailed pigeon! Yet, 



24 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

there is no protection at all for the latter in this state, even in the nesting- 
season; and thousands were shot last spring, in the unprecedented con- 
centration of the species in the southern coast counties. (See Chambers' 
in The Condor for May, 1912, p. 108.)" 



The California Condor is one of the only two species of condor now 
living, and it is the only one found in North America. As a matter of 
national pride, and a duty to posterity, the people of the United States 
can far better afford to lose a million dollars from their national treasury 
than to allow that bird to becom.e extinct. Its preservation for all com- 
ing time is distinctly a white m.an's burden upon the state of California. 
The laws now in force for the condor's protection are not half adequate I 
I think there is no law by which the accidental poisoning of those birds, 
by baits put out for coyotes and foxes, can be stopped. A law to prevent 
the use of poisoned meat baits anywhere in southern California, should 
be enacted at the next session of California's legislature. The fine for 
molesting a condor should be raised to $500, with a long prison-term as 
an alternative. A competent, interested game warden should be ap- 
pointed solely for the protection of the condors. It is time to count those 
birds, keep them under observation, and have an annual report upon 
their condition. 

The Heath Hen. — But for the protection that has been provided for 
it by the ornithologists of Massachusetts, and particularly Dr. George W. 
Field, William Brewster and John E. Thayer, the heath hen or eastern 
pinnated grouse would years ago have become totally extinct. New 
York, New Jersey and Massachusetts began to protect that species 
entirely too late. It was given five-year close seasons, without avail. 
Then it was given ten-year close seasons, but it was too late! 

To-day, the species exists only in one locality, the island of Martha's 
Vineyard, and concerning its present status, Mr. Forbush has recently 
furnished us the following clear statement : 

The heath hens increased for two years after the Massachusetts Fish and Game 
Commission estabHshed a reservation for them, but in 1911 they had not increased. 
There are probably about two hundred birds extant. 

I found a great many marsh hawks on the Island and the Commission did not kill 
them, believing them to be beneficial. In watching them, I concluded that they were 
catching the young heath hens. A large number of these hawks have been shot and 
their stomachs sent to Washington for examination, as I was too busy at the time to 
examine them. So far as I know, no report of the examination has been made, but Dr. 
Field himself examined a few of the stomachs and found the remains of the heath hen 
in some. 

The warden now says that during the past two years, the heath hen has not in- 
creased, but I can give you no definite evidence of this. I am quite sure they are being 
killed by natives of the island and that at least one collector supplies birds for museums. 
We are trying to get evidence of this. 

I believe if the heath hen is to be increased in numbers and brought back to this 
country, we shall have to have more than one warden on the reservation and, eventually, 
we shall have to establish the bird on the mainland also. 



CANDIDATES FOR OBLIVION 



25 




l-rom the "American Natural History" 

PINNATED GROUSE, OR "PRAIRIE CHICKEN" 



The Pinnated Grouse, Sage Grouse and Prairie Sharp-Tail. — 
In view of the fate of the grouse of the United States, as it has been 
wrought out thus far in all the more thickly settled areas, and particu- 
larly in view of the history of the heath hen, we have no choice but to 
regard all three of the species named above as absolutely certain to 
become totally extinct, within a short period of years, unless the condi- 
tions surrounding them are immediately and radically changed for the 
better. Personally, I do not believe that the gunners and game-hogs of 
Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Cali- 
fornia will permit any one of those species to be saved. 

If the present open seasons prevail in the states that I have men- 
tioned above, no power on earth can save those three species of grouse 
from the fate of the heath hen. To-day their representatives exist only 
in small shreds and patches, and from fully nineteen-twentieths of their 
original ranges they are forever gone. 

The sage grouse will be the first species to go. It is the largest, the 
most conspicuous, the one most easily found, and the biggest mark for 
the gunner. Those who have seen this bird in its native sage-brush well 
understand how fatally it is exposed to slaughter. 

Many appeals have been made in behalf of the pinnated grouse ; but 
the open seasons continue. The gunners of the states in which a few 
remnants still exist are determined to have them, all; and the state 
legislatures seem disposed to allow the killers to have their way. It 



26 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 




SAGE GROUSE 
The First of the Upland Game Birds that 
will Become Extinct 



may be however, that like 
New York with the heath 
hen, they will arouse and vir- 
tuously lock the stable door — 
after the horse has been stolen ! 

The Snowy Egre 
AND American E- 
GRET, (Egretta candi- 
dissima and Herodias 
egretta). — These un- 
fortunate birds, curs- 
ed for all time by the 
commerciall y valu- 
able *' aigrette " 
plumes that they 
bear, have had a very 
narrow escape from 
total extinction in the United 
States, despite all the efforts 
made to save them. The 
"plume-hunters " of the milli- 
nery trade have been, and still 
are, determined to have the 
last feather and the last drop of egret blood. In an effort to stop the 
slaughter in at least one locality in Florida, Warden Guy Bradley was- 
killed by a plume-hunter, who of course escaped all punishment through 
the heaven-born "sympathy" of a local jury. 

Of the bloody egret slaughter in Florida, not one-tenth of the whole 
story ever has been told. Millions of adult birds, — all there were, — were 
killed in the breeding season, when the plumes were ripe for the market; 
and millions of young birds starved in their nests. It was a common 
thing for a rookery of several hundred birds to be attacked by the plume- 
hunters, and in two or three days utterly destroyed. The same bloody 
work is going on to-day in Venezuela and Brazil; and the stories and 
"affidavits" stating that the millions of egret plumes being shipped an- 
nually from those countries are "shed feathers," "picked up off the 
ground," are absolute lies. The men who have sworn to those lies are 
perjurers, and should be punished for their crim.es. (See Chapter XIII). 

By 1908, the plume-hunters had so far won the fight for the egrets, 
that Florida had been swept almost as bare of these birds as the Colorado' 
desert. 

Until Mr. E. A. Mcllhenny's egret preserve, at Avery Island,, 
Louisiana, became a pronounced success, we had believed that our twO' 
egrets soon would become totally extinct in the United States. But Mr. 
Mcllhenny has certainly saved those birds to our fauna. In 1892 he- 
started an egret and heron preserve, close beside his house on Avery Is- 



28 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

land. By 1900 it was an established success. To-day 20,000 pairs of 
egrets and herons are living and breeding in that bird refuge, and the 
two egret species are safe in at least one spot in our own country. 

Three years ago, I think there were not many bird-lovers in the 
United States, who believed it possible to prevent the total extinction 
of both egrets from our fauna. All the known rookeries accessible to 
plume-hunters had been totally destroyed. Two years ago, the secret 
discovery of several small, hidden colonies prompted William Dutcher, 
President of the National Association of Audubon Societies, and Mr. T. 
Gilbert Pearson, Secretary, to attempt the protection of those colonies. 
With a fund contributed for the purpose, wardens were hired and 
duly commissioned. As previously stated, one of those wardens was 
shot dead in cold blood by a plume hunter. The task of guarding swamp 
rookeries from the attacks of money-hungry desperadoes to whom the 
accursed plumes were worth their weight in gold, is a very chancy pro- 
ceeding. There is now one warden in Florida who says that "before they 
get my rookery they will first have to get me." 

Thus far the protective work of the Audubon Association has been 
successful. Now there are twenty colonies, which contain all told, about 
5,000 egrets and about 120,000 herons and ibises which are guarded by 
the Audubon wardens. One of the most important is on Bird Island, a 
mile out in Orange Lake, central Florida, and it is ably defended by 
Oscar E. Baynard. To-day, the plume hunters who do not dare to 
raid the guarded rookeries are trying to study out the lines of flight of 
the birds, to and from their feeding-grounds, and shoot them in transit. 
Their motto is — "Anything to beat the law, and get the plumes." It is 
there that the state of Florida should take part in the war. 

The success of this campaign is attested by the fact that last year a 
number of egrets were seen in eastern Massachusetts, — for the first time 
in many years. And so to-day the question is, can the wardens con- 
tinue to hold the plume-hunters at bay ? 

The Wood-Duck {Aix sponsa), by many bird-lovers regarded as 
the most beautiful of all American birds, is threatened with extinction 
in all the states that it still inhabits with the exception of eight. Long 
ago (1901) the U. S. Biological Survey sounded a general alarm for this 
species by the issue of a special bulletin regarding its disappearance, and 
advising its protection by long close seasons. To their everlasting honor, 
eight states responded, by the enactment of long close-season laws. This- 
is the 

Roll of Honor 

Connecticut New Jersey 

Maine New York 

Massachusetts Vermont 

New Hampshire West Virginia 



CANDIDATES FOR OBLIVION 



29 




WOOD DUCK 
Regularly Killed as "Food" in 15 States 



And how is it with the 
other states that number 
the wood- duck in their 
avian faunas ? I am asham- 
ed to tell ; but it is necessary 
that the truth should be 
known. 

Surely we will find that 
if the other states have 
not the grace to protect 
this bird on account of its 
exquisite beauty they will 
not penalize it by extra 
long open seasons. 

A number of them have 
taken pains to provide extra 
long OPEN seasons on this 
species, usually of five or 
six months!! And this for 
a bird so exquisitely beau- 
tiful that shooting it for 
the table is like dining on 
birds of paradise. Here is 
a partial list of the 



Wood-Duck-Eating States (1912) 



Georgia kills and eats the Wood-duck from 


Sept. 


1, 


to Feb. 


1 


Indiana, Iowa and Kansas 


do so " 


Sept. 


1, 


to Apr. 


15 


Kentucky, (extra long!) 


does so 


Aug. 


15, 


to Apr. 


1 


Louisiana (extra long!) 






Sept. 


1, 


to Mar. 


1 


Maryland 






Nov. 


1, 


to Apr. 


1 


Michigan 






Oct. 


15, 


to Jan. 


1 


Nebraska (extra long!) 






Sept. 


1, 


to Apr. 


1 


Ohio 






Sept. 


1, 


to Jan. 


1 


Pennsylvania, (extra long!) 






Sept. 


1, 


to Apr. 


11 


Rhode Island, 






Aug. 


15, 


to Apr. 


1 


South Carolina " " 






Sept. 


1, 


to Mar. 


1 


South Dakota " " 






Sept. 


10, 


to Apr. 


10 


Tennessee " " 






Aug. 


1, 


to Apr. 


15 


Virginia 






Aug. 


1, 


to Jan. 


1 


Wisconsin 






Sept. 


1, 


to Jan. 


1 



The above are the states that really possess the wood-duck and that 
should give it, one and all, a series of five-year close seasons. Now, is 
not the record something to blush for ? 

Is there in those fifteen states nothing too beautiful or too good to go 
into the pot ? 



30 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

The Woodcock {Philohela minor), is a bird regarding which my 
bird-hunting friends and I do not agree. I say that as a species it is 
steadily disappearing, and presently will become extinct, unless it is 
accorded better protection. They reply: "Well, I can show you where 
there are woodcock yet!" 

A few months ago a Nova Scotian writer in Forest and Stream came 
out with the bold prediction that three more years of the usual annual 
slaughter of woodcock will bring the species to the verge of extinction 
in that Province. 

It is such occurrences as this that bring the end of a species : 
"Last fall [1911, at Norwalk, Conn.] we had a good flight of wood- 
cock, and it is a shame the way they were slaughtered. I know of a 
number of cases where twenty were killed by one gun in the day, and 
heard of one case of fifty. This is all wrong, and means the end of the 
woodcock, if continued. There is no doubt we need a bag limit on wood- 
cock, as much as on quail or partridge." ("Woodcock" in Forest and 
Stream, Mar. 2, 1912.) 

As far back as 1901, Dr. A. K. Fisher of the Biological Survey pre- 
dicted that the woodcock and wood-duck would both become extinct 
unless better protected. As yet, the better protection demanded has 
not materialized to any great extent. 

Says Mr. Forbush, State Ornithologist of Massachusetts, in his 
admirable "Special Report," p. 45: 

"The woodcock is decreasing all over its range in the East, and needs 
the strongest protection. Of thirty-eight Massachusetts reports, thirty- 
six state that "woodcock are decreasing," "rare" or "extinct," while 
one states that they are holding their own, and one that they are increas- 
ing slightly since the law was passed prohibiting their sale." 

Let not any honest American or Canadian, sportsman lullaby him- 
self into the belief that the woodcock is safe from extermination. As 
sure as the world, it is going! The fact that a little pocket here or there 
contains a few birds does not in the slightest degree disprove the main 
fact. If the sportsmen of this country desire to save the seed stock of 
woodcock, they must give it everywhere five or ten-year close seasons, 
and do it immediately! 

Our Shore Birds in General. — This group of game birds will be 
the first to be exterminated in North America as a group. Of all our 
birds, these are the most illy fitted to survive. They are very con- 
spicuous, very unwary, easy to find if alive, and easy to shoot. Never in 
my life have any shore birds except woodcock and snipe appealed to me 
as real game. They are too easy to kill, too trivial when killed, and some 
of them are too rank and fishy on the plate. As game for men I place them 
on a level with barnyard ducks or orchard turkeys. I would as soon be 
caught stealing a sheep as to be seen trying to shoot fishy yellow legs or 
little joke sandpipers for the purpose of feeding upon them. And yet, 
thousands of full-grown men, some of them six feet high, grow indignant 



CANDIDATES FOR OBLIVION 31 

and turn red in the face at the mention of a law to give all the shore- 
birds of New York a five-year close season. 

But for all that, gentlemen of the gun, there are exactly two alterna- 
tives between which you shall choose : 

(1) Either give the woodcock of the eastern United States just ten 
times the protection that it now has, or (2) bid the species a long farewell. 
If you elect to slaughter old Philohela minor on the altar of Selfishness, 
then it will be in order for the millions of people who do not kill birds 
to say whether that proposal shall be consummated or not. 

Read if you please Mr. W. A. McAtee's convincing pamphlet (Biolog- 
ical Survey, No. 79), on "Our Vanishing Shore Birds," reproduced in full in 
Chapter XXIII. He says : " Throughout the eastern United States, shore 
birds are fast vanishing. Many of them have been so reduced that 
extermination seems imminent. So averse to shore birds are present con- 
ditions [of slaughter] that the wonder is that any escape. All the shore 
birds of the United States are in great need of better protection. . . Shore 
birds have been hunted until only a remnant of their once vast numbers 
are left. Their limited powers of reproduction, coupled with the natural 
vicissitudes of the breeding period, make their increase slow, and pecu- 
liarly expose them to danger of extermination. So great is their econom- 
ic value that their retention in the game list and their destruction by 
sportsmen is a serious loss to agriculture." 

And yet, here in New York state there are many men who think they 
"know," who indignantly scoff at the idea that our shore birds need a 
five-year close season to help save them from annihilation. The writer's, 
appeal for this at a recent convention of the New York State Fish, 
Game and Forest League fell upon deaf ears, and was not even 
seriously discussed. 

The shore-birds must be saved ; and just at present it seems that the 
only persons who will do it are those who are not sportsmen, and who 
never kill game ! If the sportsmen persist in refusing to act, to them we 
must appeal. 

Besides the woodcock and snipe, the species that are most seriously 
threatened with extinction at an early date are the following : 

Species in Great Danger 

Willet Catoptrophorus semipalmatus 

Dowitcher Macrorhamphus griseus 

Knot : Red-Breasted Sandpiper Tryngites snbruficollis 

Upland Plover Bartramia longicauda 

Golden Plover Charadrius dominicus 

Pectoral Sandpiper Pisohia maculata 

Of these fine species, Mr. Forbush, whose excellent knowledge of the 
shore birds of the Atlantic coast is well worth the most serious consider- 
ation, says that the upland plover, or Bartramian sandpiper, "is in immi- 



32 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 




THE GRAY SQUIRREL. A FAMILIAR FRIEND WHEN PROTECTED 



nent danger of extinction. Five reports from localities where this bird 
formerly bred give it as nearing extinction, and four as extinct. This is 
one of the most useful of all birds in grass land, feeding largely on grass- 
hoppers and cutworms. . . . There is no difference of opinion in re- 
gard to the diminution of the shore birds; the reports from all quarters 
are the same. It is noteworthy that practically all observers agree that, 
considering all species, these birds have fallen oft" about 75 per cent 
within twenty-five to forty years, and that several species are nearly 
extirpated." 

In 1897 when the Zoological Society published my report on the 
"Extermination of Our Birds and Mammals," we put down the decrease 
in the volume of bird life in Massachusetts during the previous fifteen 
years at twenty-seven per cent. The later and more elaborate investi- 
gations of Mr. Forbush have satisfactorily vindicated the accuracy of 
that estimate. 

There are other North American birds that easily might be added 
to the list of those now on the road to oblivion ; but surely the foregoing 
citations are sufficient to reveal the present desperate conditions of our 
bird life in general. Now the question is: What are the great American 
people going to do about it ? 

The Gray Squirrel. — The gray squirrel is in danger of extermina- 
tion. Although it is our m.ost beautiful and companionable small wild 
anim.al, and re£-lly unfit for food, Am.ericans have strangely elected to 



CANDIDATES FOR OBLIVION 33 

■class it as "game," and shoot it to death, to eat! And this in stall-fed 
America, in the twentieth century ! Americans arc the only white people 
in the world who eat squirrels. It would be just as reasonable, and no 
more barbarous, to kill domestic cats and eat them. Their flesh would 
taste quite as good as squirrel flesh and some of them would afford quite 
as good "sport." 

Every intelligent person knows that in the United wStates the deadly 
shot-gun is rapidly exterminating every bird and every small mammal 
that is classed as "game," and which legally may be killed, even during 
two months of the twelve. The market gunners slaughter ducks, grouse, 
shore birds and rabbits as if we were all starving. 

The beautiful gray squirrel has clung to life in a few of our forests 
.and wood-lots, long after most other wild mammals have disappeared; 
but throughout at least ninety-five per cent, of its original area, it is now 
extinct. During the past thirty years I have roamed the woods of my 
state in several widely separated localities,— the Adirondacks, Catskills, 
Berkshires, western New York and elsewhere, and in all that time I 
have seen only three wild gray squirrels outside of city parks. 

Except over a very small total area, the gray squirrel is already gone 
from the wild fauna of New York State ! 

Do the well-fed people of America wish to have this beautiful animal 
entirely exterminated ? Do they wish the woods to become wholly life- 
less? Or, do they desire to bring back some of the wild creatures, and 
keep them for their children to enjoy? 

There is no wild mammal that responds to protection more quickly 
than the gray squirrel. In two years' time, wild specimens that are set 
free in city parks learn that they are safe from harm and become almost 
fearless. They take food from the hands of visitors, and climb into their 
arms. One of the most pleasing sights of the Zoological Park is the 
enjoyment of visitors, young and old, in "petting " our wild gray squirrels. 

We ask the Boy Scouts of America to bring back this animal to each 
state where it belongs, by securing for it from legislatures and governors 
the perpetual closed seasons that it imperatively needs. It is not much 
to ask. This can be done by writing to members of the legislatures and 
requesting a suitable law. Such a request will be both right and reason- 
able; and three states have already granted it. 

The gray squirrel is naturally the children's closest wild-animal friend. 
Surely every farmer boy would like to have colonies of gray squirrels 
around him, to keep him company, and furnish him with entertainment. 
A wood-lot without squirrels and chipmunks is indeed a lifeless place. 
For $20 anyone can restock any bit of woods with the most compan- 
ionable and most beautiful tree-dweller that nature has given us. 

The question now is, which will you choose — a gray squirrel colony to 
every farm, or lifeless desolation ? 

We ask every American to lend a hand to save Silver- Tail. 



CHAPTER IV 
EXTINCT AND NEARLY EXTINCT SPECIES OF MAMMALS 

When we pause and consider the years, the generations and the ages 
that Nature spends in the production of a high vertebrate species, the 
preservation of such species from extermination should seriously concern 
us. As a matter of fact, in modern man's wild chase after wealth and 
pleasure, it is only one person out of every ten thousand who pauses to 
regard such causes, unless cornered by some protectionist fanatic, held 
fast and coerced to listen. 

We are not discussing the animals of the Pleistocene, or the Eocene, 
or any period of the far-distant Past. We are dealing with species that 
have been ruthlessly, needlessly and wickedly destroyed by man during 
our own times; species that, had they been given a fair chance, would be 
alive and well to-day. 

In reckless waste of blood and treasure, the nineteenth century has 
much for which to answer. Wars and pillage, fires, earthquakes and vol- 
canoes are unhappily unavoidable. Like the poor of holy writ, we have 
them with us always. But the destruction of animal life is ih a totally 
different category from the accidental calamities of life. It is deliberate, 
cold-blooded, persistent, and in its final stage, criminal! Worst of all, 
there is no limit to the devilish persistence of the confirmed destroyer, 
this side of the total extinction of species. No polar night is too cold, no 
desert inferno is too hot for the man who pursues wild life for commercial 
purposes. The rhytina has been exterminated in the far north, the ele- 
phant seals on Kerguelen are being exterminated in the far south, and 
midway, in the desert mountains of Lower California a fine species of 
mountain sheep is rapidly being shot into oblivion. 

Large Mammals Completely Exterminated 

The Arizona Elk, (Cervus merriami). — Right at our very door, 
under our very noses and as it were only yesterday, a well-defined species 
of American elk has been totally exterminated. Until recently the moun- 
tairs of Arizona and New Mexico were inhabited by a light-colored elk of 
smaller size than the Wyoming species, whose antlers possessed on each 
side only one brow tine instead of two. The exact history of the blotting 
out of that species has not yet been written, but it seems that its final 
extinction occurred about 1901. Its extermination was only a routine 
incident of the devilish general slaughter of American big game that by 
1900 had wiped out nearly everything killable over a large portion of the 
Rocky Mountain region and the Great Plains. 



EXTINCT AND NEARLY EXTINCT SPECIES 35 

The Arizona elk was exterminated before the separate standing of 
the species had been discovered by natiiralists, and before even one skin 
had been preserved in a museum! In 1902 Mr. E. W. Nelson described 
the species from two male skulls, — all the material of which he knew. 
Since that time, a third male skull, bearing an excellent pair of antlers, 
has been discovered by Mr. Ferdinand Kaegebehn, a member of the New 
York Zoological Society, and presented to our National Collection of 
Heads and Horns. It came from the Santa Catalina Mountains, Arizona, 
in 1884. The species was first exterminated in the central and northern 
mountains of Arizona, probably twenty years ago, and made its last 
stand in northwestern New Mexico. Precisely when it became extinct 
there, its last abiding place, we do not know, but in time the facts may 
appear. 

The Quagga, (Equus quagga). — Before the days of Livingstone, 
Gordon-Cumming and Anderson, the grassy plains and half-forested hills 
of South Africa were inhabited by great herds of a wild equine species 
that in its markings was a sort of connecting link between the striped 
zebras and the stripeless wild asses. The quagga resembled a wild ass 
with a few zebra stripes around its neck, and no stripes elsewhere. 

There is no good reason why a mammal that is not in any one of the 
families regularly eaten by man should be classed as a game animal. 
White men, outside of the western border of the continent of Europe, do 
not eat horses ; and by this token there is no reason why a zebra should 
be shot as a " game " animal, any more than a baboon. A big male baboon 
is dangerous; a male zebra is not. 

Nevertheless, white men have elected to shoot zebras as game; and 
under this curse the unfortunate quagga fell to rise no more. The species 
was shot to a speedy death by sportsmen, and by the British and Dutch 
farmers of South Africa. It became extinct about 1875, and to-da}^ there 
are only 18 specimens in all the museums of the world. 

The Blaubok, (Hippotragus leucophaeus) . — The first of the Afri- 
can antelopes to become extinct in modern times was a species of laro-e 
size, closely related to the roan antelope of to-day, and named by the 
early Dutch settlers of Cape Colony the blaubok, which means "blue- 
buck." It was snufifed out of existence in the year 1800, so quickly and 
so thoroughly that, like the Arizona elk, it very nearly escaped the 
annals of natural history. According to the careful investigations of Mr. 
Graham Renshaw, there are only eight specimens in existence in all the 
museums of Europe. In general terms it may be stated that this species 
has been extinct for about a century. 

David's Deer, (Elaphurus davidianus). — We enter this species with 
those that are totally extinct, because this is true of it so far as its wild 
state is concerned. It is a deer nearly as large as the red deer of Europe, 
with 3-tined antlers about equal in total length to those of the red deer. 
Its most striking differential character is its long tail, a feature that 
among the deer of the world is quite unique. 



36 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 




SKELETON OF A RHYTINA, OR ARCTIC SEA-COW 
In the United States National Museum 

Originally this species inhabited "northern Mongolia" (China), but 
in a wild state it became extinct before its zoological standing became 
known to the scientific world. The species was called to the attention of 
zoologists by a Roman Catholic missionary, called Father David, and 
when finally described it was named in his honor. 

At the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion, in 1900, there were about 200 
specimens living in the imperial park of China, a short distance south of 
Pekin; but during the rebellion, all of them were killed and eaten, thus 
totally exterminating the species from Asia. 

Fortunately, previous to that calamity (in 1894), the Duke of Bed- 
ford had by considerable effort and expenditure procured and established 
in his matchless park surrounding Woburn Abbey, England, a herd of 
eighteen specim.ens of this rarest of all deer. That nucleus has thriven 
and increased, until in 1910 it contained thirty-four head. Owing to the 
fact that all the living female specimens of this remarkable species are 
concentrated in one spot, and perfectly liable to be wiped out in one year 
by riot, war or disease, there is some cause for anxiety. The writer has 
gone so far as to suggest the desirability of starting a new herd of David's 
deer, at some point far distant from England, as an insurance measure 
against the possibility of calamity at Woburn. Excepting two or three 
specimens in European zoological gardens that have been favored by the 
Duke of Bedford, there are no living specimens outside of Woburn Park. 

The Rhytina, (Rhytina gigas). — The most northerly Sirenian that 
(so far as we know) ever inhabited the earth, lived on the Commander 
Islands m the northern end of Behring Sea, and was exterminated by man, 
for its oil and its flesh, about 1768. It was first made known to the world 
by Stcller, in 1741, and must have become extinct near the beginning of 
the nineteenth century. 

The rhytina belonged to the same mammalian Order as the manatee of 
Florida and South America, and the dugong of Australia. The largest 
manatee that Florida has produced, so far as we know, was thirteen feet 
long. The rhytina attained a length of between thirty and thirty-five 
feet, and a weight of 6,000 pounds or over. The flesh of this animal, like^ 
that of the manatee and dugong, must have been edible, and surely was 
prized by the hungry sailors and natives of its time. It is not strange 



EXTINCT AND NEARLY EXTINCT SPECIES 



■iT 




BURCHELL'S ZEBRA, IN THE U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM 
Now Believed to be Totally Extinct 



'that such a species was quickly exterminated by man, in the arctic regions. 
The wonder is that it ever existed at a latitude so outrageous for a Siren- 
ian, an animal which by all precedents should prefer life in temperate or 
warm waters. 

Burchell's Zebra (Equus burchelli typicus). — The foundation type- 
of what now is the Burchell group of zebras, consisting of four or five sub- 
species of the original species of burchelli, is an animal abundantly striped 
as to its body, neck and head, but with legs that are almost white and 
free from stripes. The sub-species have legs that are striped about half 
as much as the mountain zebra and the Grevy species. 

While there are Chapman zebras and Grant zebras in plent}-, and of 
Crawshay's not a few, all these are forms that have developed northward 
of the range of the parent species, the original Eqtms burchelli. For half 
a century in South Africa the latter had been harried and driven and shot, 
and now it is gone, forever. Now, the museum people of the world are 
hungrily enumerating their mounted specimens, and live ones cannot be 
procured with money, because there are none ! Already it is comn'.on talk 
that "the true Burchell zebra is extinct;" and unfortunately there is no 
good reason to doubt it. Even if there are a few now living in some 



38 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 




THYLACINE OR TASMANIAN WOLF 
N ow Being Exterminated by the Sheep Owners of Tasmania 

remote nook of the Transvaal, or Zululand, or Portuguese East Africa, 
the chances are as 100 to 1 that they will not be suffered to bring back 
the species; and so, to Burchell's zebra, the world is to-day saying 
"Farewell!" 



Species of Large Mammals Almost Extinct 

The Thylacine or Tasmanian Wolf, (Thylacinus cynocephalus). — 
Four years ago, when Mr. W. H. D. Le Souef, Director of the Melbourne 
Zoological Garden (Australia) , stood before the cage of the living thylacine 
in the New York Zoological Park, he first expressed surprise at the sight 
of the animal, then said : 

"I advise you to take excellent care of that specimen; for when it 
is gone, you never will get another. The species soon will be extinct." 

This opinion has been supported, quite independently, by a lady who 
is the highest authority on the present status of that species, Mrs. Mary 
G. Roberts, of Hobart, Tasmania. For nearly ten years Mrs. Roberts 
has been proctiring all the living specimens of the thylacine that money 
could buy, and attempting to breed them at her private zoo. She states 
that the mountain home of this animal is now occupied by flocks of sheep, 
and because of the fact that the ' ' Tasmanian wolves ' ' raid the flocks and 
kill lambs, the sheep-owners and herders are systematically poisoning 
the thylacines as fast as possible. Inasmuch as the species is limited to 



EXTINCT AND NEARLY EXTINCT SPECIES 39 




WEST INDIAN SEAL 
In the New York Aquarium 

Tasmania, Mrs. Roberts and others fear that the sheepmen will totally 
exterminate the remnant at an early date. This animal is the largest and 
also the most interesting carnivorous marsupial of Australia, and its 
untimely end will be a cause for sincere regret. 

The West Indian Seal, (Monachus tropicalis).- — For at least fifty 
years, all the zoologists who ever had heard of this species believed that 
the oil-hunters had completely exterminated it. In 1885, when the 
National Museum came into possession of one poorly-mounted skin, 
from Professor Poey, of Havana, it was regarded as a great prize. 

Most unexpectedly, in 1S86 American zoologists were startled by the 
discovery of a small herd on the Triangle Islands, in the Caribbean Sea, 
near Yucatan, by Mr. Henry L. Ward, now director of the Milwaukee 
Public Museum, and Professor Ferrari, of the National Museum of 
Mexico. They found about twenty specimens, and collected only a 
sufficient number to establish the true character of the species. 

Since that time, four living specimens have been captured, and sent 
to the New York Aquarium, where they lived for satisfactory periods. 
The indoor life and atmosphere did not seem to injure the natural vitality 
of the animals. In fact, I think they were far more lively in the Aquari- 
um than were the sluggish creatures that Mr. Ward saw on the Triangle 
reefs, and described in his report of the expedition. 

It is quite possible that there are yet alive a few specimens of this odd 
species; but the Damocletian sword of destruction hangs over them 
suspended by a fine hair, and it is to be expected that in the future some 



40 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 




CALIFORNIA ELEPHANT SEAL 
Photographed on Guadalupe Island by C H. Townsend. 

roving sea adventurer will pounce upon the Remnant, and wipe it out of 
existence for whatever reason may to him seem good. 

The California Elephant Seal, (Mirounga angustirostris) . — 
This remarkable long-snouted species of seal was reluctantly stricken 
from the fauna of the United States several years ago, and for at least 
fifteen years it has been regarded as totally extinct. Last year, however 
(1911), the Albatross scientific expedition, under the control of Director 
C. H. Townsend of the New York Aquarium, visited Guadalupe 
Island, 175 miles oif the Pacific coast of Lower California and there 
found about 150 living elephant seals. They took six living specimens, 
all of which died after a few months in captivity. Ever since that time, 
first one person and then another comes to the front with a cheerful 
proposition to go to those islands and "clean up" all the remainder of 
those wonderful seals. One hunting party could land on Guadalupe, 
and in one week totally destroy the last remnant of this almost extinct 
species. To-day the only question is, Who will be mean enough to do it? 

Fortunately, those seals have no commercial value whatsoever. The 
little oil they would yield would not pay the wages of cook's mate. The 
proven impossibility of keeping specimens alive in captivity, even for 
one year, and the absence of cash value in the skins, even for museum 
purposes, has left nothing of value in the animals to justify an expedition 
to kill or to capture them. No zoological garden or park desires any of 
them, at any price. Adult males attain a length of sixteen feet, and 
females eleven feet. Formerly this species was abundant-in San Christo- 
bal Bay, Lower California. 



EXTINCT AND NEARLY EXTINCT SPECIES 41 

At present, Mexico is in no frame of mind to provide real protection 
to a small colony of seals of no commercial value, 175 miles from her 
mainland, on an uninhabited island. It is wildly improbable that those 
seals will be permitted to live. It is a safe prediction that our next 
news of the elephant seals of Guadalupe will tell of the total extinction 
of those last 140 survivors of the species. 

The California Grizzly Bear, (Ursus horrihilis calif ornicus). — Na 
one protects grizzly bears, except in the Yellowstone Park and other 
game preserves. For obvious reasons, it is impossible to say whether any 
individuals of this huge species now remain alive, or how long it will be 
until the last one falls before a .405 Winchester engine of extermination. 
We know that a living specimen can not be procured with money, and 
we believe that " Old Monarch " now in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, 
is the last specimen of his species that ever will be exhibited alive. 

I can think of no reason, save general Calif ornian apathy, why the 
extinction of this huge and remarkable animal w^as not prevented by 
law. The sunset grizzly (on a railroad track) is the advertising em- 
blem of the Golden State, and surely the state should take sufficient 
interest in the species to prevent its total extermination. 

But it will not. California is hell-bent on exterminating a long list 
of her wild-life species, and it is very doubtful whether the masses can be 
reached and aroused in time to stop it. Name some of the species? 
Certainly; with all the pleasure in life: The band-tailed pigeon, the 
white-tailed kite, the sharp-tailed grouse, the sage grouse, the mountain 
sheep, prong-horned antelope California mule deer, and ducks and geese 
too numerous to mention. 



CHAPTER V 

THE EXTERMINATION OF SPECIES, STATE BY STATE 

Early in 1912 I addressed to about 250 persons throughout the United 
States, three questions, as follows: 

1. What species of birds have become totally extinct in your state? 

2. What species of birds and mammals are threatened with early extinction? 

3. What species of mammals have been exterminated throughout your state? 

These queries were addressed to persons whose tastes and observa- 
tions rendered them especially qualified to furnish the information de- 
sired. The interest shown in the inquiry was highly gratifying. The 
best of the information given is summarized below; but this tabulation 
also includes much information acquired from other sources. The gen- 
eral summary of the subject will, I am sure, convince all thoughtful per- 
sons that the present condition of the best wild life of the nation is in- 
deed very grave. This list is not submitted as representing prolonged 
research or absolute perfection, but it is sufficient to point forty-eight 
morals. 

Birds and Mammals That Have Been Totally Exterminated in 
Various States and Provinces 

Alabama: 

Passenger pigeon, Carolina parrakeet; puma, elk, gray wolf, beaver. 
Arizona: 

Ridgway's quail {Colinus ridgwayi); Arizona elk {Cervus merriami), bison. 

Arkansas: 

Passenger pigeon, Carolina parrakeet, whooping crane; bison, elk, beaver. 

California: 

No birds totally extinct, but several nearly so; grizzly bear (?), elephant seal. 
Colorado: 

Carolina parrakeet, whooping crane; bison. 
Connecticut: 

Passenger pigeon, Eskimo curlew, great auk, Labrador duck, upland plover, heath 
hen, wild turkey; puma, gray wolf, Canada lynx, black bear, elk. 

Delaware: 

Wild turkey, ruffed grouse, passenger pigeon, heath hen, dickcissel, whooping crane, 
Carolina parrakeet; white-tailed deer, black bear, gray wolf, beaver, Canada lynx, 
puma. 



EXTERMINATION STATE BY STATE 43 

Florida: 

Flamingo, roseate spoonbill, scarlet ibis, Carolina parrakeet, passenger pigeon. 

Georgia: 

Passenger pigeon, Carolina parrakeet, whooping crane, trumpeter swan; bison, elk, 
beaver, gray wolf, puma. — (Last 3, Craig D. Arnold.) 

Idaho: 

Wood duck, long-billed curlew, whooping crane; bison. — (Dr. C. S. Moody.) 

Illinois: 

Passenger pigeon, whooping crane, Carolina parrakeet, trumpeter swan, snowy 
egret, Eskimo curlew; bison, elk, white-tailed deer, black bear, puma, Canada lynx. 

Indiana: 

Passenger pigeon, whooping crane, northern raven, wild turkey, ivory-billed wood- 
pecker, Carolina parrakeet, trumpeter swan, snowy egret, Eskimo curlew; bison, elk, 
white-tailed deer, black bear, Canada lynx, beaver, porcupine. — (Amos W. Butler) 

Iowa: 

Wild turkey, Eskimo curlew, whooping crane, trumpeter swan, white pelican, pas- 
senger pigeon; bison, elk, antelope, white-tailed deer, black bear, puma, Canada lynx, 
gray wolf, beaver, porcupine. • 

Kansas: 

American scaup duck, woodcock, ruffed grouse, wild turkey, pileated woodpecker, 
parrakeet, white-necked raven, American raven (all Prof. L. L. Dyche); golden 
plover, Eskimo curlew, Hudsonian curlew, wood-duck (C. H. Smyth and James 
Howard, Wichita). Bison, elk, mule deer, white-tailed deer, grav wolf, beaver (?), 
otter, lynx (?) (L. L. D.) 

("Reports as complete and thorough as these for other localities no doubt would 
show lists equally long for several other states. — -(W. T. H.) 

Kentucky: 

Passenger pigeon, parrakeet; bison, elk, puma, beaver, gray wolf. 

Louisiana: 

Passenger pigeon, Carolina parrakeet, Eskimo curlew, flamingo, scarlet ibis, roseate 
spoonbill; bison, ocelot. 

Maine: 

Great auk, Labrador duck, Eskimo curlew, oystercatcher, wild turkey, heath hen, 
passenger pigeon; puma, gray wolf, wolverine, caribou. — (All Arthur H. Norton, 
Portland.) 

Maryland: 

Sandhill crane, parrakeet, passenger pigeon; bison, elk, beaver, gray wolf, puma, 
porcupine. 

Massachusetts: 

Wild turkey, passenger pigeon, Labrador duck, whooping crane, sandhill crane, 
black-throated bunting, great auk, Eskimo curlew. — (William Brewster, W. P. 
Wharton) ; Canada lynx, gray wolf, black bear, moose, elk. 

Michigan: 

Passenger pigeon, wild turkey, sandhill crane, whooping crane, bison, elk, wolverine. 

Minnesota: 

Whooping crane, white pelican, trumpeter swan, passenger pigeon, bison, elk, mule 
deer, antelope. 

A strange condition exists in Minnesota, as will be seen by reference to the next list 
of states. A great many species are on the road to speedy extermination; but as yet 
the number of those that have become totally extinct up to date is small. 

Mississippi: 

Parrakeet, passenger pigeon; bison. (Data incomplete.) 



44 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Missouri: 

Parrakeet, ivory-billed woodpecker, passenger pigeon, whooping crane, pinnated 
grouse; bison, elk, beaver. 

Montana: 

Although many Montana birds are on the verge of extinction, the only species that 
we are sure have totally vanished are the passenger pigeon and whooping crane. 
Mammals extinct, bison. 

Nebraska: 

Curlew, wild turkey, parrakeet, passenger pigeon, whooping crane, and no doubt 
all the other species that have disappeared from Kansas. Mammals: bison, antelope, 
elk, and mule deer. 

Nevada: 

By a rather odd combination of causes and effects, Nevada retains representatives 
of nearly all her original outfit of bird and mammal species except the bison and elk; 
but several of them will shortly become extinct. 

New Hampshire: 

Wild turkey, heath hen, pigeon, whooping crane, Eskimo curlew, upland plover, 
Labrador duck; woodland caribou, moose. 

New Jersey: 

Heath hen, wild turkey, pigeon, parrakeet, Eskimo curlew, Labrador duck, snowy 
egret, whooping crane, sandhill crane, trumpeter swan, pileated woodpecker; gray 
wolf, black bear, beaver, elk. porcupine, puma. 

New Mexico: 

Notwithstanding an enormous decrease in the general volume of wild life in New 
Mexico, comparatively few species have been totally exterminated. The most impor- 
tant are the bison and Arizona elk. 

New York: 

Heath hen, passenger pigeon, wild turkey, great auk, trumpeter swan, Labrador 
duck, harlequin duck, Eskimo curlew, upland plover, golden plover, whooping crane, 
sandhill crane, purple martin, pileated woodpecker, moose, caribou, bison, elk, puma, 
gray wolf, wolverine, marten, fisher, beaver, fox, squirrel, harbor seal. 

North Carolina: 

Ivory-billed woodpecker, parrakeet, pigeon, roseate spoonbill, long-billed curlew 
{Niimenius americaniis), Eskimo curlew; bison, elk, gray wolf, puma, beaver. — (E. 
L. Ewbank, T. Gilbert Pearson, H. H. and C. S. Brimley.) 

North Dakota: 

Whooping crane, long-billed curlew, Hudsonian godwit, passenger pigeon; bison, 
elk, mule deer, mountain sheep. — (W. B. Bell and Alfred Eastgate.) 

Ohio : 

Pigeon, wild turkey, pinnated grouse, northern pileated woodpecker, parrakeet; 
white-tailed deer, bison, elk, black bear, puma, gray wolf, beaver, otter, puma, lynx. 

Oklahoma: 

Records for birds insufficient. Mammals: bison, elk, antelope, mule deer, puma, 
black bear. 

Oregon: 

The only species known to have been wnoily exterminated during recent times is the 
California condor and the bison, both of which were rare stragglers into Oregon ; but 
a number of species are now close to extinction. 

Pennsylvania: 

Heath hen, pigeon, parrakeet, Labrador duck; bison, elk, moose, puma, gray wolf, 



EXTERMINATION STATE BY STATE 45 

Canada Ij^nx, wolverine, beaver. — (Witmer Stone, Dr. C. B. Penrose and Arthur 

Chapman.) 

Rhode Island: 

Heath hen, passenger pigeon, wild turkey, least tern, eastern willet, Eskimo curlew, 
marbled god wit, long-billed curlew. — (Harry S. Hathaway); puma, black bear, gray 
wolf, beaver, otter, wolverine. 

South Carolina: 

Ivory-billed woodpecker, CaroHna parrakeet; bison, elk, puma, gray wolf. — (James 
H. Rice, Jr.) 

South Dakota: 

Whooping crane, trumpeter swan, pigeon, long-billed curlew; bison, elk, mule deer, 
mountain sheep. 

Tennessee: 

Records insufficient. 

Texas: 

Wild turkey, passenger pigeon, ivory-billed woodpecker, flamingo, roseate spoon- 
bill, American egret, whooping crane, wood-duck; bison, elk, mountain sheep, ante- 
lope, "a small, dark deer that lived 40 years ago." (Capt. M. B. Davis.) 

Utah: 

Records insufficient. 

Vermont: 

Wild turkey, heath hen, pigeon, whooping crane, Eskimo curlew, upland plover, 
Labrador duck; caribou, moose, beaver, white-tailed deer in 1875, but successfully 
reintroduced. 

Virginia: 

Records insufficient. 

Washington: 

Very few species have become totally extinct, but a number are on the verge, and 
will be named in the next state schedule. 

West Virginia: 

Pigeon, parrakeet; bison, elk, beaver, puma, gray wolf. 

Wisconsin: 

Whooping crane, passenger pigeon, American egret, wild turkey, Carolina parra- 
keet; bison, moose, elk, woodland caribou, puma, wolverine. 

Wyoming: 

Whooping crane, trumpeter swan, wood-duck; mountain goat. 



CANADA 
Alberta: 

Passenger pigeon, whooping crane; bison. 

British Columbia: 

A. Bryan Williams reports: "Do not know of an}' birds having become extinct." 

Manitoba: 

Pigeon; bison, antelope, gray wolf. 

New Brunswick: 

Pigeon. 

Nova Scotia: 

Labrador duck, Eskimo curlew, passenger pigeon. 

Ontario: 

Wild turkey, pigeon, Eskimo curlew. 



46 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Prince Edward Island: 

(Reported by E. T. Carbonell): Eskimo curlew, horned grebe, ring-billed gull, 
Caspian tern, passenger pigeon, Wilson's petrel, wood-duck, Barrow's golden-eye, 
whistling swan, American eider, white-fronted goose, purple sandpiper, Canada 
grouse, long-eared owl, screech owl, black-throated bunting, pine warbler, red-necked 
grebe, purple martin and catbird; beaver, black fox, silver gray fox, marten and 
black bear. 

Quebec: 
Pigeon. 

Saskatchewan : 
Pigeon; bison. 

Birds and Mammals Threatened with Extinction 

The second question submitted in my inquiry produced results even 
more startling than the first. None of the persons reporting can be 
regarded as alarmists, but some of the lists of species approaching 
extinction are appallingly long. To their observations I add other notes 
and observations of interest at this time. 

Alabama : 

Wood-duck, snowy egret, woodcock. "The worst enemy of wild life is the pot- 
hunter and game hog. These wholesale slaughterers of game resort to any device 
and practice, it matters not how murderous, to accomplish the pernicious ends of 
their nefarious campaign of relentless extermination of fur and feather. They cannot 
be controlled by local laws, for these after having been tried for several generations 
have proven consummate failures, for the reason that local authorities will not enforce 
the provisions of game and bird protective statutes. Experience has demonstrated 
the fact that no one desires to inform voluntarily on his neighbors , and since breaking 
the game law is not construed to involve moral turpitude, even to an infinitesimal 
degree, by many of our citizens, the plunderers of nature's storehouse thus go free, 
it matters not how great the damage done to the people as a whole." — (John H. Wal- 
lace, Jr., Game Commissioner of Alabama.) 

Alaska : 

Thanks to geographic and climatic conditions, the Alaskan game laws and $15,000 
with which to enforce them, the status of the wild life of Alaska is fairly satisfactory. 
I think that at present no species is in danger of extinction in the near future. When 
it was pointed out to Congress in 1902, by Madison Grant, T. S. Palmer and others 
that the wild life of Alaska was seriously threatened. Congress immediately enacted 
the law that was recommended, and now appropriates yearly a fair sum for its enforce- 
ment. I regard the Alaskan situation as being, for so vast and difficult a region, rea- 
sonably well in hand, even though open to improvement. 

There is one fatal defect in our Alaskan game law, in the perpetual and sweeping 
license to kill, that is bestowed upon "natives" and "prospectors." Under cover of 
this law, the Indians can slaughter game to any extent they choose; and they are 
great killers. For example: In 1911 at Sand Point, Kenai Peninsula, Frank E. Klein- 
schmidt saw 82 caribou tongues in the boat of a native, that had been brought in for 
sale at 50 cents, while the carcasses were left where they fell, to poison the air of 
Alaska. Thanks to the game law, and five wardens, the number of big game animals 
killed last year in Alaska by sportsmen was reasonably small, — just as it sh;uld 
have been.— (W. T. H.) 

Arizona : 

During an overland trip made by Dr. MacDougal and others in 1907 from Tucson 
to Sonoyta, on the international boundary, 150 miles and back again, we saw not one 
antelope or deer. — (W. T. H.) 



EXTERMINA TION STATE BY STATE 47 

California : 

Swan, white heron, bronze ibis. CaUfornia valley quail are getting very scarce, 
and unless adequate protection is afforded them shortly, they will be found hereafter 
only in remote districts. Ducks also are decreasing rapidly.— (H. W. Keller, Los 
Angeles.) 

Sage grouse and Columbian sharp-tailed grouse are so nearly extinct that it may 
practically be said that they are extinct. Among species likely to be exterminated in 
the near future are the wood-duck and band-tailed pigeon. — ^(W. P. Taylor, Berkeley.) 

Colorado: 

Sage grouse and sharp-tailed grouse; nearly all the shore birds. 

Connecticut: 

All the shore birds; quail, purple martin. 

Delaware: 

Wood duck, upland plover, least tern, Wilson tern, roseate tern, black skimmer, 
oystercatcher, and numerous other littoral species. Pileated woodpeckers, bald 
eagles and all the ducks are much more rare than formerly. Swan are about gone, 
geese scarce. The list of ducks, geese and shore-birds, as well as of terns and gulls 
that are nearing extinction is appalling. — (C. J. Pennock, Wilmington.) 

Wood-duck, woodcock, turtle dove and bob-white. — (A. R. Spaid, Wilmington.) 

Florida: 

Limpkin, ivory-billed woodpecker, wild turkey (?). 

Georgia: 

Ruffed grouse, wild turkey. 

Idaho: 

Harlequin duck, mountain plover, dusky grouse, Columbian sharp-tailed grouse, 
sage grouse. Elk, goats and grizzly bears are becoming very scarce. Of the smaller 
animals I have not seen a fisher for years, and marten are hardly to be found. The 
same is true of other species. — (Dr. Charles S. Moody, Sand Point.) 

Illinois: 

Pinnated grouse, except where rigidly protected. In Vermillion County, by long 
and persistent protection Harvey J. Sconce has bred back upon his farm about 400 
of these birds. 

Indiana: 

Pileated woodpecker, woodcock, ruffed grouse, pigeon hawk, duck hawk. — (Amos 
W. Butler, Indianapolis.) 

In northern and northwestern Indiana, a perpetual close season and rigid protec- 
tion have enabled the almost-extinct pinnated grouse to breed up to a total number 
now estimated by Game Commissioner Miles and his wardens at 10,000 birds. This 
is a gratifying illustration of what can be done in bringing back an almost-vanished 
species. The good example of Indiana should be followed by every state that still 
possesses a remnant of prairie-chickens, or other grouse. 

Iowa: 

Pinnated grouse, wood-duck. Notwithstanding an invasion of Jasper County, 
Iowa, in the winter of 1911-12 by hundreds of pinnated grouse, such as had not been 
known in 20 years, this gives no ground to hope that the future of the species is worth 
a moment's purchase. The winter migration came from the Dakotas, and was be- 
lieved to be due to the extra severe winter, and the scarcity of food. Commenting on 
this unprecedented occurrence, J. L. Sloanaker in the "Wilson Bulletin" No. 78, says: 

"In the opinion of many, the formerly abundant prairie chicken is doomed to early 
extinction. Many will testify to their abundance in those years [in South Dakota, 
1902] when the great land movement was taking place. The influx of hungry settlers, 



48 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

together with an occasional bad season, decimated their ranks. They were eaten 
by the farmers, both in and out of season. Driven from pillar to post, with no friends 
and insufficient food, — what else then can be expected?" 

Mr. F. C. Pellett, of Atlantic, Iowa, says: "Unless ways can be devised of rearing 
these birds in the domestic state, the prairie hen in my opinion is doomed to early 
extinction." 

The older inhabitants here say that there is not one song-bird in summer where 
there used to be ten. — (G. H. Nicol, in Outdoor Life March, 1912.) 

Kansas: 

To all of those named in my previous list that are not actually extinct, I might add 
the prairie hen, the lesser prairie hen, as well as the prairie sharp-tailed grouse and 
the wood-duck. Such water birds as the avocets, godwits, greater yellow-legs, long- 
billed curlew and Eskimo curlew are becoming very rare. All the water birds that 
are killed as game birds have been greatly reduced in numbers during the past 25 
years. I have not seen a wood-duck in 5 years. The prairie chicken has entirely dis- 
appeared from this locality. A few are still seen in the sand hills of western Kansas,^ 
and they are still comparatively abundant along the extreme southwestern line, and 
in northern Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle. — (C. H. Smyth, Wichita.) 

Yellow-legged plover, golden plover; Hudsonian and Eskimo curlew, prairie 
chicken. — (James Howard, Wichita.) 

Louisiana: 

Ivory-billed woodpecker, butterball, bufflehead. The wood-duck is greatly dimin- 
ishing every year, and if not completely protected, ten years hence no wood-duck 
will be found in Louisiana. — (Frank M. Miller, and G. E. Beyer, New Orleans.) 

Ivory-billed woodpecker, sandhill crane, whooping crane, pinnated grouse, Ameri- 
can and snowy egret where unprotected. — (E. A. Mcllhenny, Avery Island.) 

Maine: 

Wood-duck, upland plover, purple martin, house wren, pileated woodpecker, bald 
eagle, yellow-legs, great blue heron, Canada goose, redhead and canvasback duck. — 
(John F. Sprague, Dover.) 

Puffin, Leach's petrel, eider duck, laughing gull, great blue heron, fish-hawk and 
bald eagle. — (Arthur H. Norton, Portland.) 

Maryland: 

Curlew, pileated woodpecker, summer duck, snowy heron. No record of sandhill 
crane for the last 35 years. Greater yellow-leg is much scarcer than formerly, also 
Bartramian sandpiper. The only two birds which show an increase in the past few 
years are the robin and lesser scaup. General protection of the robin has caused its 
increase; stopping of spring shooting in the North has probably caused the increase 
of the latter. As a general proposition I think I can say that all birds are becoming- 
scarcer in this state, as we have laws that do not protect, little enforcement of same, 
no revenue for bird protection and too little public interest. We are working to change 
all this, but it comes slowly. The public fails to respond until the birds are 'most gone, 
and we have a pretty good lot of game still left. The members of the Order Gallina^ 
are only holding their own where privately protected. The members of the Plover 
Family and what are known locally as shore birds are still plentiful on the shores of 
Chincoteague and Assateague, and although they do not breed there as formerly, 
so far as I know there are no species exterminated. — (Talbott Denmead, Baltimore.) 

Massachusetts : 

Wood-duck, hooded merganser, blue-winged teal, upland plover; curlew (perhaps 
already gone) ; red-tailed hawk (I have not seen one in Middlesex County for several 
years) ; great horned owl (almost gone in my county, Middlesex) ; house wren. The 
eave swallows and purple martins are fast deserting eastern Massachusetts and the 
barn swallows steadily diminishing in numbers. The bald eagle should perhaps be 
included here. I seldom see or hear of it now. — (William Brewster, Cambridge.) 

Upland plover, woodcock, wood-duck (recent complete protection is helping these 
somewhat), heath hen, piping plover, golden plover, a good many song and insec- 



EXTERMINATION STATE BY STATE 49 

tivorous birds are apparently decreasing rather rapidly; for instance, the eave swal- 
low. — (William P. Wharton, GrotonJ 

Michigan: 

Wood-duck, limicolae, woodcock, sandhill crane. The great whooping crane is not 
a wild bird, but I think it is now practically extinct. Many of our warblers and song 
birds are now exceedingly rare. Ruflfed grouse greatly decreased during the past 10 
years. — (W. B. Mershon, Saginaw.) 

Minnesota: 

The sandhill crane has been killed by sportsmen. I have not seen one in three 
years. Where there were, a few years ago, thousands of blue herons, egrets, wood 
ducks, redbirds, and Baltimore orioles, all those birds are now almost extinct in 
this state. They are being killed by Austrians and Italians, who slaughter every- 
thing that flies or moves. Robins, too, will be a rarity if more severe penalties are 
not imposed. I have seized 22 robins, 1 pigeon hawk, 1 crested log-cock, 4 wood- 
peckers and 1 grosbeak in one camp, at the Lertonia mine, all being prepared for eat- 
ing. I have also caught them preparing and eating sea gulls, terns, blue heron, egret 
and even the bittern. I have secured 128 convictions since the first of last Sep- 
tember. — (George E. Wood, Game Warden, Hibbing, Minnesota.) 

From Robert Page Lincoln, Minneapolis. — Partridge are waning fast, quail grad- 
ually becoming extinct, prairie chickens almost extinct. Duck-shooting is rare. The 
gray squirrel is fast becoming extinct in Minnesota. Mink are going fast, and fur- 
bearing animals generally are becoming extinct. The game is passing so very rapidly 
that it will soon be a thing of the forgotten past. The quail are suffering most. The 
falling off is amazing, and inconceivable to one who has not looked it up. Duck- 
shooting is rare, the clubs are idle for want of birds. What ducks come down fly high, 
being harassed coming down from the north. I consider the southern Minnesota 
country practically cleaned out. 

Missouri: 

The birds threatened with extermination are the American woodcock, wood- duck, 
snowy egret, pinnated grouse, wild turkey, ruffed grouse, golden eagle, bald eagle, 
pileated woodpecker. 

Montana: 

Blue grouse. — (Henry Avare, Helena.) 

Sage grouse, prairie and Columbian sharp-tailed grouse, trumpeter swan, Canada 
goose, in fact, most of the water-fowl. The sickle-billed curlew, of which there were 
many a few years ago, is becoming scarce. There are no more golden or black- 
bellied plover in these parts. — (Harry P. Stanford, Kalispell.) 

Curlew, Franklin grouse (fool hen) and sage grouse. — W. R. Felton, Miles City. 

Sage grouse. — (L. A. Huffman, Miles City.) 

Ptarmigan, wood-duck, sharp-tailed grouse, sage grouse, fool hen and plover. All 
game birds are becoming scarce as the country becomes settled and they are confined 
to uninhabited regions. — (Prof. M. J. Elrod, Missoula.) 

Nebraska: 

Grouse, prairie chicken and quail. — (H. N. Miller, Lincoln.) 
Whistling swan. — (Dr. S. G. Towne, Omaha.) 

New Hampshire: 

Wood- duck and upland plover. 

New York: 

Quail, woodcock, upland jjlover, golden plover, black-bellied plover, willet, dow- 
itcher, red-breasted sandpiper, long-billed curlew, wood-duck, purple martin, red- 
headed woodpecker, mourning dove; gray squirrel, otter. 

New Jersey: 

Ruffed grouse, teal, canvasback, red-head duck, widgeon, and all species of shore 
birds, the most noticeable being black-bellied plover, dowitcher, golden plover, killdeer. 



50 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

sickle-bill curlew, upland plover and English snipe; also the mourning dove. — (James 
M. Stratton and Ernest Napier, Trenton.) 

Upland plover, apparently killdeer, egret, wood-duck, woodcock, and probably 
others. — (B. vS. Bowdish, Demarest.) 

North Carolina: 

Forster's tern, oystercatcher, egret and snowy egret. — (T. Gilbert Pearson, Sec. 
Nat. Asso. Audubon vSocieties.) 

Ruflfed grouse rapidly disappearing; bobwhite becoming scarce. — (E. L. Ewbank, 
Hendersonville.) 

Perhaps American and snowy egret. If long-billed curlew is not extinct, it seems 
due to become so. No definite, reliable record of it later than 1885. — (H. H. Brim- 
ley, Raleigh.) 

North Dakota: 

Wood-duck, prairie hen, upland plover, sharp-tailed grouse, canvas-back, pinnated 
and ruffed grouse, double-crested cormorant, blue heron, long-billed curlew, whooping 
crane and white pelican. — (W. B. Bell, Agricultural College.) 

Upland plover, marbled godwit, Baird's sparrow, chestnut-collared longspur. — 
(Alfred Eastgate, Tolna.) 

Ohio: 

White heron, pileated woodpecker (if not already extinct). White heron reported 
a number of times last year; occurrences in Sandusky, Huron, Ashtabula and several 
other counties during 1911. These birds would doubtless rapidly recruit under a 
proper federal law. — (Paul North, Cleveland.) 

Turtle dove, quail, red-bird, wren, hummingbird, wild canary [goldfinch] and 
blue bird.— (Walter C. Staley, Dayton.) 

Oklahoma: 

Pinnated grouse. — (J. C. Clark); otter, kit fox, black-footed ferret. — (G. W. 
Stevens.) 

Oregon: 

American egret, snowy egret. — (W. L. Finley, Portland.) 

Pennsylvania: 

Virginia partridge and woodcock. — (Arthur Chapman.) 

Wood-duck, least bittern, phalarope, woodcock, duck hawk and barn swallow. — • 
(Dr. Chas. B. Penrose.) 
Wild turkey; also various transient and straggling water birds. — (Witmer Stone.) 

Rhode Island: 

Wood-duck, knot, greater yellow-legs, upland plover, golden plover, piping plover, 
great horned owl. — (Harry S. Hathaway, South Auburn.) 

South Carolina: 

Wood duck, abundant 6 years ago, now almost gone. Wild turkey (abundant up 
to 1898) ; woodcock, upland plover, Hudsonian curlew Carolina rail, Virginia rail, 
clapper rail and coot. Black bear verging on extinction, opossum dwindling rapidly. — 
(James H. Rice Jr., Summerville.) 

South Dakota: 

Prairie chicken and quail are most likely to become extinct in the near future. — 
(W. F. Bancroft, Watertown.) 

Texas : 

Wild turkey and prairie chickens. — (J. D. Cox, Austin ) 

Plover, all species; curlew, cardinal, road-runner, woodcock, wood-duck, canvas- 
back, cranes, all the herons; wild turkey; quail, all varieties; prairie chicken and 
Texas guan.— (Capt. M. B. Davis, Waco.) 

Curlew, very rare ; plover, very rare ; antelope. (Answer applies to the Panhandle 
of Texas. — Chas. Goodnight.) 



EXTERMINATION STATE BY STATE 51 

Everything [is threatened with extinction] save the dove, which is a migrating bird. 
Antelope nearly all gone. — (Col. O. C. Guessaz, San Antonio.) 

Utah : 

Our wild birds are well protected, and there are none that are threatened with 
extinction. They are increasing.— (Fred. W. Chambers, State Game Warden, Salt 
Lake City.) 

Vermont: 

If all states afforded as good protection as does Vermont, none; but migrating birds 
like woodcock are now threatened.— (John W. Tilcomb, State Game Warden, Lyn- 
don ville.) 

Virginia: 

Pheasants (raffed grouse), wild turkey and other game birds are nearly extinct. A 
few bears remain, and deer in small numbers in remote sections. In fact, all animals 
show great reduction in numbers, owing to cutting down forests, and constant gun- 
ning. — (L. T. Christian, Richmond.) 

West Virginia: 

Wood-duck, wild turkey, northern raven, dickcissel. — (Rev. Earle A. Brooks, 
Weston.) 

Wild turkeys are very scarce, also ducks. Doves, once numerous, now almost nil. 
Eagles, except a few in remote fastnesses. Many native song-birds are retreating 
before the English sparrow. — (William Perry Brown, Glenville.) 

Wood-duck and wild turkey.— (J. A. Viquesney, Belington.) 

Wisconsin: 

Double-crested cormorant, upland plover, white pelican, long-billed curlew, lesser 
snow goose, Hudsonian curlew, sandhill crane, golden plover, woodcock, dowitcher 
and long-billed duck; spruce grouse, knot, prairie sharp-tailed grouse, marbled god- 
wit and bald eagle. All these, formerly alaundant, must now be called rare in Wis- 
consin. — (Prof. George E. Wagner, Madison.) 

Common tern, knot, American white pelican, Hudsonian godwit, trumpeter swan, 
long-billed curlew, snowy heron, Hudsonian curlew, American avocet, prairie sharp- 
tailed grouse, dowitcher, passenger pigeon. Long-billed dowitcher and northern 
hairy woodpecker. — (Henry L. Ward, Milwaukee Public Museum.) 

Wood-duck, ruddy duck, black mallard, grebe or hell-diver, tern and woodcock. — 
(Fred. Gerhardt, Madison.) 

Wyoming: 

Sage grouse and sharp-tailed grouse are becoming extinct, both in Wyoming and 
North Dakota. Sheridan and Johnson Counties (Wyoming) have sage grouse pro- 
tected until 1915. The miners (mostly foreigners) are out after rabbits at all sea- 
sons. To them everything that flies, walks or swims, large enough to be seen, is a 
"rabbit." They are even worse than the average sheep-herder, as he will seldom 
kill a bird brooding her young, but to one of those men, a wren or creeper looks like 
a turkey. Antelope, mountain sheep and grizzly bears are going, fast! The moose 
season opens in 1915, for a 30 days open season, then close season until 1920. — 
(Howard Eaton, Wolf.) 

Sage grouse, blue grouse, curlew, sandhill crane, porcupine practically extinct; 
wolverine and pine marten nearly all gone. — (S. N. Leek, Jackson's Hole.) 

CANADA 

Alberta : 

Swainson's buzzard and sandhill crane are now practically extinct. Elk and ante- 
lope will soon be as extinct as the buffalo.— (Arthur G. Wooley-Dod, Calgary.) 

British Columbia: 

Wild fowl are in the greatest danger in the southern part of the Province, especially 
the wood-duck. Otherwise birds are increasing rather than otherwise, especially the 



52 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

small non-game birds. The sea otter is almost extinct. — (A. Bryan Williams, Pro- 
vincial Game Warden, Vancouver.) 

Manitoba: 

Whooping crane, vs^ood-duck and golden plover. Other species begin to show a 
marked increase, due to our stringent protective measures. For example, the pinnated 
grouse and sharp-tailed grouse are more plentiful than in 15 years. Prong-homed 
antelope and wolf are threatened with extinction. — (J. P. Turner, Winnipeg.) 

The game birds indigenous to this Province are fairly plentiful. Though the 
prairie chicken was very scarce some few years ago, these birds have become very 
plentiful again, owing to the strict enforcement of our present "Game Act." The 
elk are in danger of becoming extinct if they are not stringently guarded. Beaver 
and otter were almost extinct some few years ago, but are now on the increase, owing 
to a strict enforcement of the "Game Act." — (Charles Barber, Winnipeg.) 

New Brunswick: 

Partridge, plover and woodcock. Moose and deer are getting more plentiful every 
year.— (W. W. Gerard, St. John.) 

Nova Scotia: 

The Canada grouse may possibly become extinct in Nova Scotia, unless the pro- 
tection it now enjoys can save it. The American golden plover, which formerly came 
in immense flocks, is now very rare. Snowflakes are very much less common than 
formerly, but I think this is because our winters are now usually much less severe. 
The caribou is almost extinct on the mainland of Nova Scotia, but is still found in 
North Cape Breton Island. The wolf has become excessively rare, but as it is found 
in New Brunswick, it may occur here at any time again. The beaver had been threat- 
ened with extinction; but since being protected, it has multiplied, and is now on a 
fairly safe footing again. — (Curator of Museum, Halifax.) 

Ontario: 

Quail are getting scarce. — (E. Tinsley, Toronto.) 

Wood-duck, bob white, woodcock, golden plover, Hudsonian curlew, knot and dow- 
itcher [are threatened with extinction.] — (C. W. Nash, Toronto.) 

Prince Edward Island: 

The species threatened with extinction are the golden plover, American woodcock, 
pied-billed grebe, red-throated loon, sooty shearwater, gadwall, ruddy duck, black- 
crowned night heron, Hudsonian godwit, kildeer, northern pileated woodpecker, 
chimney swift, yellow-bellied flycatcher, red- winged blackbird, pine finch, magnolia 
warbler, ruby-crowned kinglet. ^(E. T. Carbonell, Charlottetown.) 

In closing the notes of this survey, I repeat my assurance that they 
are not offered on a basis of infalHbiHty. It would require years of work 
to obtain answers from forty-eight states to the three questions that I 
have asked that could be offered as absolutely exact. All these reports 
are submitted on the well-recognized court-testimony basis, — "to the best 
of our knowledge and belief." Gathered as they have been from persons 
whose knowledge is good, these opinions are therefore valuable; and 
they furnish excellent indices of wild-life conditions as they exist in 1912 
in the various states and provinces of North America north of Mexico. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE REGULAR ARMY OF DESTRUCTION 

In order to cure any disease, the surgeon must make of it a correct 
diagnosis. It is useless to try to prescribe remedies without a thorough 
understanding of the trouble. 

That the best and most interesting wild life of America is disappearing 
at a rapid rate, we all know only too well. That proposition is entirely 
beyond the domain of argument. The fact that a species or a group of 
species has made a little gain here and there, or is stationary, does not 
sensibly diminish the force of the descending blow. The wild-life situ- 
ation is full of surprises. For example, in 1902 I was astounded by the 
extent to which bird life had decreased over the 130 miles between Miles 
City, Montana, and the Missouri River since 1886; for there was no rea- 
son to expect anything of the kind. Even the jack rabbits and coyotes 
had almost totally disappeared. 

The duties of the present hour, that fairly thrust themselves into our 
faces and will not be put aside, are these: 

First, — To save valuable species from extermination ! 

Second, — To preserve a satisfactory representation of our once rich 
fauna, to hand down to Posterity. 

Third, — To protect the farmer and fruit grower from the enormous 
losses that the destruction of our insectivorous and rodent-eating birds 
is now inflicting upon both the producer and consumer. 

Fourth, — To protect our forests, by protecting the birds that keep 
down the myriads of insects that are destructive to trees and shrubs. 

Fifth, — To preserve to the future sportsmen of America enough game 
and fish that they may have at least a taste of the legitimate pursuit of 
game in the open that has made life so interesting to the sportsmen of 
to-day. 

For any civilized nation to exterminate valuable and interesting spe- 
cies of wild mammals, birds or fishes is more than a disgrace. It is a crime ! 
We have no right, legal, moral or commercial, to exterminate any valu- 
able or interesting species; because none of them belong to us, to exter- 
minate or not, as we please. 

For the people of any civilized nation to permit the slaughter of the 
wild birds that protect its crops, its fruits and its forests from the insect 
hordes, is worse than folly. It is sheer orneryness and idiocy. People 
who are either so lazy or asinine a^ to permit the slaughter of their best 



54 OVR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

friends deserve to have their crops destroyed and their forests ravaged. 
They deserve to pay twenty cents a pound for their cotton when the 
boll weevil has cut down the normal supply. 

It is very desirable that we should now take an inventory of the 
forces that have been, and to-day are, active in the destruction of our 
wild birds, mammals, and game fishes. During the past ten years a 
sufficient quantity of facts and figures has become available to enable 
us to secure a reasonably full and accurate view of the whole situation. 
As we pause on our hill-top, and survey the field of carnage, we find that 
we are reviewing the Army oj Destruction! 

It is indeed a motley array. We see true sportsmen beside ordinary 
gunners, game-hogs and meat hunters; handsome setter dogs are mixed 
up with coyotes, cats, foxes and skunks; and well-gowned women and 
ladies' maids are jostled by half-naked "poor- white" and black-negro 
"plume hunters." 

Verily, the destruction of wild life makes strange companions. 

Let us briefly review the several army corps that together make up 
the army of the destroyers. Space in this volume forbids an extended 
notice of each. Unfortunately it is impossible to segregate some of these 
classes, and number each one, for they merge together too closely for 
that ; but we can at least describe the several classes that form the great 
mass of destroyers. 

The Gentlemen Sportsmen. — These men are the very bone and 
sinew of wild life preservation. These are the men who have red blood 
in their veins, who annually hear the red gods calling, who love the earth, 
the mountains, the woods, the waters and the sky. These are the men to 
whom "the bag" is a matter of small importance, and to whom "the 
bag-limit" has only academic interest; because in nine cases out of ten 
they do not care to kill all that the law allows. The tenth and exceptional 
time is when the bag limit is "one." A gentleman sportsman is a man 
who protects game, stops shooting when he has "enough" — without 
reference to the legal bag-limit, and whenever a species is threatened 
with extinction, he conscientiously refrains from shooting it. 

The true sportsmen of the world are the men who once were keen in 
the stubble or on the trail, but who have been halted by the general 
slaughter and the awful decrease of game. Many of them, long before a 
hair has turned gray, have hung up their guns forever, and turned to the 
camera. These are the men who are willing to hand out checks, or to 
leave their mirth and their employment and go to the firing line at their 
state Capitols, to lock horns with the bull-headed killers of wild life who 
recognize no check or limit save the law. 

These are the men who have done the most to put upon our statute 
books the laws that thus far have saved some of our American game 
from total annihilation, and who (so we firmly believe) will be chiefly 
instrumental in tightening the lines of protection around the remnant. 
These are the men who are making and stocking game preserves, public 
and private, great and small. 



56 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

If you wish to know some of these men, I will tell you where to find 
a goodly number of them; and when you find them, you will also find 
that they are men you would enjoy camping with ! Look in the member- 
ship lists of the Boone and Crockett Club, Camp-Fire Club of America, 
the Lewis and Clark Club of Pittsburgh, the New York State League, 
the Shikar Club of London, the Society for the Preservation of the Wild 
Fauna of the British Empire, the Massachusetts Fish and Game Pro- 
tective Association, the Springfield (Mass.) Sportsmen's Association, the 
Camp-Fire Clubs of Detroit and Chicago, and the North American Fish 
and Game Protective Association. 

There are other bodies of sportsmen that I would like to name, were 
space available, but to set down here a complete list is quite impossible. 

The best and the most of the game-protective laws now in force iri the 
United States and Canada were brought into existence through the ini- 
tiative and efforts of the real sportsmen of those two nations. But for 
their activity, exerted on the right side, the settled portion of North 
America would to-day be an utterly gameless land ! Even though the 
sportsmen have taken their toll of the wilds, they have made the laws 
that have saved a remnant of the game until 1912. 

For all that, however, every man who still shoots game is a soldier in 
the Army of Destruction ! There is no blinking that fact. Such men do 
not stand on the summit with the men who now protect the game and 
do not shoot at all! The millions of men who do not shoot, and who also 
do nothing to protect or preserve wild life, do not count ! In this warfare 
they are merely ciphers in front of the real figures. 

The Gunners, Who Kill to the Limit. — Out of the enormous mass 
of men who annually take up arms against the remnant of wild life, and 
dre called " sportsmen^" I believe that only one out of every 500 
conscientiously stops shooting when game becomes scarce, and extinction 
is impending. All of the others feel that it is right and proper to kill 
all the game that they can kill up to the legal bag limit. It is the reasoning 
of Shylock: 

"Justice demands it, and the law doth give it!" 

Especially is this true of the men who pay their one dollar per year for 
a resident hunting license, and feel that in doing so they have done a 
great Big Thing! 

This is a very deadly frame of mind. Ethically it is entirely wrong; 
and at least two million men and boys who shoot American game must 
be shown that it is wrong! This is the spirit of Extermination, clothed 
in the robes of Law and Justice. 

Whenever and wherever game birds are so scarce that a good shot 
who hunts hard during a day in the fields finds only three or four birds, he 
should stop shooting at once, and devote his mind and energies to the prob- 
lem of bringing back the game! It is strange that conditions do not make 
this duty clear to every conscientious citizen. 

The Shylock spirit which prompts a man to kill all that "the law 
allows" is a terrible scourge to the wild life of America, and to the world 



REGULAR ARMY OF DESTRUCTION 57 

at large. It is the spirit of extermination according to law. Even the 
killing of game for the market is not so great a scourge as this; for this 
spirit searches out the game in every nook and cranny of the world, and 
spares not. In effect it says: "If the law is defective, it is right forme to 
take every advantage of it ! I do not need to have any conscience in the 
matter outside the letter of the law.'" 

The extent to which this amazing spirit prevails is positively awful. 
You will find it among pseudo game-protectors to a paralyzing extent ! 
It is the great gunner's paradox, and it pervades this country from 
corner to corner. No: there is no use in trying to "educate" the mass 
of the hunters of America out of it, as a means of saving the game; for 
positively it can not be done! Do not waste time in trying it. If you 
rely upon it, you will be doing a great wrong to wild life, and promoting 
extermination. The only remedy is sweeping laws, for long close seasons, 
for a great many species. Forget the paltry dollar-a-year license money. 
The license fees never represent more than a tenth part of the value of 
the game that is killed under licenses. 

The savage desire to kill "all that the law allows" often is mani- 
fested in men in whom we naturally expect to find a very different spirit. 
By way of rllumination, I offer three cases out of the many that I could 
state. 

Case No. 1. The Duck Breeder. — A gentleman of my acquaintance 
has spent several years and much money in breeding wild ducks. From 
my relations with him, I had acquired the belief that he was a great lover 
of ducks, and at least wished all species well. One whizzing cold day in 
winter he called upon me, and stated that he had been duck-hunting; 
which surprised me. He added, "I have just spent two days on Great 
South Bay, and I made a great killing. In the two days I got ninety-four 
ducks!" 

I said, " How could you do it, — caring for wild ducks as you do.^" 
"Well, I had hunted ducks twice before on Great South Bay and 
didn't have very good luck; but this time the cold weather drove the 
ducks in, and I got square with them!" 

Case No. 2. The Ornithologist. — A short time ago the news was pub- 
lished in Forest and Stream that a well-known ornithologist had distin- 
guished himself in one of the mid-western states by the skill he had dis- 
played in bagging thirty-four ducks in one day, greatly to the envy of 
the natives ; and if this shoe fits any American naturalist, he is welcome 
to put it on and wear it. 

Case No. 3. The Sportsman. — A friend of mine in the South is the 
owner of a game preserve in which wild ducks are at times very numerous. 
Once upon a time he was visited by a northern sportsmen who takes a 
deep and abiding interest in the preservation of game. The sportsman 
was invited to go out duck-shooting; ducks being then in season there. 
He said: 

"Yes, I will go; and T want you to put me in a place where I can kill 



58 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 




G. O. SHIELDS 
A Notable Defender of Wild Life 



a hundred ducks in a day! I never 
have done that yet, and I would like 
to do it, once!" 

"All right," said my friend, "I can 
put you in such a place ; and if you can 
shoot well enough, you can kill a hun- 
dred ducks in a day." 

The effort was made in all earnest- 
ness. There was much shooting, but 
few were the ducks that fell before it. 
In concluding this story my friend 
remarked in a tone of disgust : 

"All the game-preserving sports- 
men that come to me are just like 
that! They want to kill all they can 
kill!'' 

There is a blood-test by which to 
separate the conscientious sportsmen 
from the mere gunners. Here it is : 
A sportsman stops shooting when game becomes scarce; knd he does 
not object to long-close-season laws; but 

A gunner beheves in killing "all that the law allows;" and he objects 
to long close seasons! 

I warrant that whenever and wherever this test is applied it will 
separate the sheep from the goats. It applies in all America, all Asia 
and Africa, and in Greenland, with equal force. 

The Game-Hog. — This term was coined by G. O. Shields, in 1897, 
when he was editor and owner of Recreation Magazine, and it has come 
into general use. It has been recognized by a judge on the bench as being 
an appropriate term to apply to all men who selfishly slaughter wild game 
beyond the limits of decency. Although it is a harsh term, and was mer- 
cilessly used by Mr. Shields in his fierce war on the men who slaughtered 
game for "sport," it has jarred at least a hundred thousand men into 
their first realization of the fact that to-day there is a difference between 
decency and indecency in the pursuit of game. The use of the term has 
done very great good; but, strange to say, it has made for Mr. Shields a 
great many enemies outside the ranks of the game-hogs themselves! 
From this one might fairly suppose that there is such a thing as a sym- 
pathetic game-hog! 

One thing at least is certain. During a period of about six years, while 
his war with the game-hogs was on, from Maine to California, Mr. 
Shields's name became a genuine terror to excessive killers of game; 
and it is reasonably certain that his war saved a great number of game 
birds from the slaughter that otherwise would have overtaken them ! 

The number of armed men and boys who annually take the field in 
the United States in the pursuit of birds and quadrupeds, is enormous. 



REGULAR ARMY OF DESTRUCTION 



59 



People who do not shoot have no conception of it ; and neither do they 
comprehend the mechanical perfection and fearful deadliness of the 
weapons used. This feature of the situation can hardly be realized until 
some aspect of it is actually seen. 

I have been at some pains to collect the latest figures showing the 
number of hunting licenses issued in 1911, but the total is incomplete. 
In some states the figures are not obtainable, and in some states there 
are no hunters' license laws. The figures of hunting licenses issued in 
1911 that I have obtained from official sources are set forth below. 

The United States Army of Destruction 
Hunting Licenses issued in igi i 



Alabama 

California 

Colorado 

Connecticut . . . 

Idaho 

Illinois 

Indiana 

Iowa 

Kansas 

Louisiana 

Maine 

Massachusetts . 

Michigan 

Missouri 



o 

138 

41 

19 

50 

192 

54 

91 

44 

76 

2 

45 

22 

66 



090 
689 
058 
635 
342 
244 
813 
000 
069 
000 
552 
039 
323 
,662 



Montana 

Nebraska 

New Hampshire . . . 

New Jersey 

New Mexico 

New York 

Rhode Island 

South Dakota .... 

Utah 

Vermont 

Washington, about 

Wisconsin 

Wyoming 



59,291 
39,402 
33,542 
61,920 

7,000 
150,222 

0,541 
31,054 
27,800 
31,762 
40,000 
138,457 

9,721 



Total number of regularly licensed gunners 1,486,228 



The average for the twenty-seven states that issued licenses as shown 
above is 55,046 for each state. 

Now, the twenty-one states issuing no licenses, or not reporting, 
produced in 1911 fully as many gunners per capita as did the other twenty- 
seven states. Computed fairly on existing averages they must have 
turned out a total of 1,155,966 gunners, making for all the tJnited States 
2,642,194 armed men and boys warring upon the remnant of game in 
1911. We are not counting the large number of lawless hunters who never 
take out licenses. Now, is Mr. Beard's picture a truthful presentation, 
or not ? 

New York with only deer, ruffed grouse, shore-birds, ducks and a very 
few woodcock to shoot annually puts into the field 150,222 armed men. 
In 1909 they killed about 9,000 deer! 

New Jersey, spending $30,000 in 1912 in efforts to restock her covers 
with game, and with a population of 2,537,167, sent out in 1911 a total 
army of 61,920 well-armed gunners. How can any of her game survive? 

New Hampshire, with only 430,572 population, has 33,542 licensed 
hunters, — equal to thirty-three regiments of full strength! 

Vermont, with 355,956 people, sends out annually an army of 31,762 
men who hunt according to law; and in 1910 they killed 3,649 deer. 



60 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Utah, with only 373,351 population, had 27,800 men in the field after 
her very small remnant of game ! How can any wild thing of Utah escape ? 

Montana, population 376,053, had in 1911 an army of 59,291 well- 
armed men, warring chiefly upon the big game, and swiftly extermi- 
nating it. 

How long can any of the big game stand before the army of two and 
one-half million well-armed men, eager and keen to kill, and out to get 
an equivalent for their annual expenditure in guns, ammunition and 
other expenses ? 

In addition to the hunters themselves, they are assisted by thousands 
of expert guides, thousands of horses, thousands of dogs, hundreds of 
automobiles and hundreds of thousands of tents. Each big-game hunter 
has an experienced guide who knows the haunts and habits of the game, 
the best feeding grounds, the best trails, and everything else that will aid 
the hunter in taking the game at a disadvantage and destroying it. The big- 
game rifles are of the highest power, the longest range, the greatest accu- 
racy and the best repeating mechanism that modern inventive genius can 
produce. It is said that in Wyoming the Maxim silencer is now being 
used. England has produced a weapon of a new type, called "the scatter 
rifle, " which is intended for use on ducks. The best binoculars are used 
in searching out the game, and horses carry the hunters and guides as near 
as possible to the game. For bears, baits are freely used, and in the pur- 
suit of pumas, dogs are employed to the limit of the available supply. 

The deadliness of the automobile in hunting already is so apparent 
that North Dakota has wisely and justly forbidden their use by law, 
(1911). The swift machine enables city gunmen to penetrate game 
regions they could not reach with horses, and hunt through from four 
to six localities per day, instead of one only, as formerly. The use of 
automobiles in hunting should be everywhere prohibited. 

Every appliance and assistance that money can buy, the modern 
sportsman secures to help him against the game. The game is beset dur- 
ing its breeding season by various wild enemies, — foxes, cats, wolves, 
pumas, lynxes, eagles, and many other predatory species. The only help 
that it receives is in the form of an annual close season — which thus far has 
saved in America only a few local moose, white-tailed deer and a few game 
birds, from, steady and sure extermination. 

The hag limits on which vast reliance is placed to preserve the wild game, 
are a fraud, a delusion and a snare! The few local exceptions only prove 
the generality of the rule. In every state, without one single exception, 
the bag limits are far too high, and the laws are of deadly liberality. In 
many states, the bag limit laws on birds are an absolute dead letter. 
Fancy the 125 wardens of New York enforcing the bag-limit laws on 150,- 
000 gunners! It is this horrible condition that is enabling the licensed 
army of destruction to get in its deadly work on the game, all over the 
world. In America, the over-liberality of the laws are to blame for two- 
thirds of the carnival of slaughter, and the successful evasions of the law 
are responsible for the other third. 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 



^^I^^^I^^^C^^Biffl 






^ 


^^^^^^^^^Ek^ T "l 




m 


Blb| 


, 1 


H 


ISK 




Ih 



WHY THE SANDHILL CRANE IS BECOMING EXTINCT 
Ninteen of Them Killed as "Game" by Three Gunners. (Note the Machine Gun. i 

The only remedy for the present extermination of game according to 
law that so rapidly and so furiously is proceeding all over the United 
States, Canada, Alaska, and Africa, is ten-year close seasons on all the 
species threatened with extinction, and immensely reduced open seasons 
and bag limits on all the others. 

Will the people who still have wild game take heed now, and clamp 
down the brakes, hard and fast before it is too late, or will they have their 
game exterminated ? 

Shall we have five-year close seasons, or close seasons of 500 years? 
We must take our choice. 

Shall we hand down to our children a gameless continent, with all the 
shame that such a calamity will entail ? 

We have got to answer these questions like men, or they will soon be 
answered for us by the extermination of the wild life. For twenty-five 
years we have been smarting under the disgrace of the extermination of 
our bison millions. Let us not repeat the dose through the destruction 
of other species. 



CHAPTER VII 
THE GUERRILLAS OF DESTRUCTION 

We have now to deal with The Guerrillas of Destruction. 

In warfare, a guerrilla, or bushwhacker, is an armed man who recog- 
nizes none of the rules of civilized warfare, and very often has no com- 
mander. In France he is called a " franc-tireur, " or free-shooter. The 
guerrilla goes out to live on the country, to skulk, to war on the weak, and 
never attack save from ambush, or when the odds clearly are on his side. 
His military status is barely one remove from that of the spy. 

The meat-shooters who harry the game and other wild life in order to 
use it as a staple food supply; the Italians, negroes and others who shoot 
song-birds as food ; the plume-hunters and the hide-and-tusk hunters all 
over the world are the guerrillas of the Army of Destruction. Let us 
consider some of these grand divisions in detail. 

Here is an inexorable law of Nature, to which there are no exceptions : 

No wild species of bird, mammal, reptile or fish can withstand exploita 
tion for commercial purposes. 

The men who pursue wild creatures for the money or other value there 
is in them, never give up. They work at slaughter when other men are 
enjoying life, or are asleep. If they are persistent, no species on which 
they fix the Evil Eye escapes extermination at their hands. 

Does anyone question this statement? If so let him turn backward 
and look at the lists of dead and dying species. 

The Division of Meat-Shooters contains all men who sordidly 
shoot for the frying-pan, — to save bacon and beef at the expense of the 
public, or for the markets. There are a few wilderness regions so remote 
and so difficult of access that the transportation of meat into them is a 
matter of much difficulty and expense. There are a very few men in 
North America who are justified in "living off the country," for short 
periods. The genuine prospectors always have been counted in this class ; 
but all miners who are fully located, all lumbermen and railway-builders 
certainly are not in the prospector's class. They are abundantly able to 
maintain continuous lines of communication for the transit of beef and 
mutton. 

Of all the meat-shooters, the market-gunners who prey on wild fowl 
and ground game birds for the big-city markets are the most deadly to 
wildlife. Enough geese, ducks, brant, quail, ruffed grouse, prairie chick- 
ens, heath hens and wild pigeons have been butchered by gunners and 
netters for "the market" to have stocked the whole world. No section 



64 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 




A MARKET GUNNER AT WORK OX MARSH ISLAND 

Killing Mallards for the New Orleans Market. The Purchase of This Island by Mrs. Russell Sage has now 

Converted it Into a Bird Sanctuary. 



containing a good supply of game has escaped. In the United States the 
great slaughtering-grounds have been Cape Cod; Great South Bay, New 
York; Currituck Sound, North Carolina; Marsh Island, Louisiana; the 
southwest corner of Louisiana; the Sunk Lands of Arkansas; the lake 
regions of Minnesota ; the prairies of the whole middle West ; Great Salt 
Lake; the Klamath Lake region (Oregon) and southern California. 

The output of this systematic bird slaughter has supplied the greedy 
game markets of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Balti- 
more, Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, 
Portland, and Seattle. The history of this industry, its methods, its 
carnage, its profits and its losses would make a volume, but we can not 
enter upon it here. Beyond reasonable doubt, this awful traffic in dead 
game is responsible for at least three-fourths of the slaughter that has 
reduced our game birds to a mere remnant of their former abundance. 
There is no influence so deadly to wild life as that of the market gunner 
who works six days a week, from sunrise until sunset, hunting down and 
killing every game bird that he can reach with a choke-bore gun. 

During the past five years, several of the once-great kilHng grounds 
have been so thoroughly "shot out" that they have ceased to hold their 
former rank. This is the case with the Minnesota Lakes, the Sunk Lands 
of Arkansas, the Klamath Lakes of Oregon, and I think it is also true of 
southern California. The Klamath Lakes have been taken over by the 
Government as a bird refuge. Currituck Sound, at the northeastern 
corner of North Carolina, has been so bottled up by the Bayne law of New 



GUERRILLAS OF DESTRUCTION 



65 




RUFFED GROUSE 
A Common Victim of Illegal Slaughter 



York State that Currituck's 
greatest market has been 
cut off. Last year only one- 
half the usual number of 
ducks and geese were killed ; 
and already many "pro- 
fessional " duck and brant 
shooters have abandoned 
the business because the 
commission merchants no 
longer will buy dead birds. 
Very many enormous 
bags of game have been 
made in a day by market 
gunners: but rarely have 
they published any of their 
records. The greatest kill of 
which I ever have heard oc- 
curred under the auspices of 
the Glenn County Club, in southern California, on February 5, 1906. 
Two men, armed with automatic shot-guns, fired five shots apiece, and 
got ten geese out of one flock. In one hour they killed two hundred and 
eighteen geese, and their bag for the day was four hundred and fifty geese! 
The shooter who wrote the story for publication (on February 12, at 
Willows, Glenn County, California) said: "It being warm weather, the 
birds had to be shipped at once in order to keep them from spoiling." 
A photograph was made of the "one hour's slaughter" of two hundred 
and eighteen geese, and it was published in a western magazine with 
"C. H. B.'s" story, nearly all of which will be found in Chapter XV. 

The reasons why market shooting is so deadly destructive to wild life 
are not obscure. 

The true sportsman hunts during a very few days only each year. 
The market gunners shoot early and late, six days a week, month after 
month. When game is abundant, the price is low, and a great quantity 
must be killed in order to make it pay well. When game is scarce, the 
market prices are high, and the shooter makes the utmost exertions to 
find the last of the game in order to secure the "big money." 

When game is protected by law, thousands of people with money 
desire it for their tables, just the same, and are willing to pay fabulous 
prices for what they want, when they want it. Many a dealer is quite 
willing to run the risk of fines, because fines don't really hurt; they are 
only annoying. The dealer wishes to make the big profit, and retain his 
customers; "and besides," he reasons, "if I don't supply him some one 
else will ; so what is the difference ? ' ' 

When game is scarce, prices high and the consumer's money ready, 
there are a hundred tricks to which shooters and dealers willingly resort 
to ship and receive unlawful game without detection. It takes the very 



66 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 




Prom " Rod and Gun in Canada " 

A PERFECTLY LAWFUL BAG OF 58 RUFFED GROUSE FOR TWO MEN 



best kind of game wardens, — genuine detectives, in fact, — to ferret out 
these cunning illegal practices, and catch lawbreakers "with the goods 
on them," so that they can be punished. Mind you, convictions can not 
be secured at both ends of the line save by the most extraordinary good 
fortune, and usually the shooter and shipper escape, even when the 
dealer is apprehended and fined. 

Here are some of the methods that have been practiced in the past 
in getting illegal game into the New York market : 

Ruffed grouse and quail have both been shipped in butter firkins, 
marked ' ' butter ' ' ; and latterly, butter has actually been packed solidly 
on top of the birds. 

Ruffed grouse and quail very often have been shipped in egg crates, 
marked "eggs." They have been shipped in trunks and suit cases, — a 



GUERRILLAS OF DESTRUCTION 67 

very common method for illegal game birds, all over the United States. 
In Oklahoma when a man refuses to open his trunk for a game warden, 
the warden joyously gets out his brace and bitt, and bores an inch hole 
into the lower story of the trunk. If dead birds are there, the tell-tale 
auger quickly reveals them. 

Three years ago, I was told that certain milk-wagons on Long Island 
made daily collections of dead ducks intended for the New York market, 
and the drivers kindly shipped them by express from the end of the route. 

Once upon a time, a New York man gave notice that on a certain date 
he would be in a certain town in St. Lawrence County, New York, with a 
palace horse-car, "to buy horses." Car and man appeared there as adver- 
tised. Very ostentatiously, he bought one horse, and had it taken aboard 
the car before the gaze of the admiring populace. At night, when the 
A. P. had gone to bed, many men appeared, and into the horseless end of 
that car, they loaded thousands of ruffed grouse. The game warden who 
described the incident to me said: "That man pulled out for New York 
with one horse and half a car load of ruffed grouse!'' 

Whenever a good market exists for the sale of game, as sure as the 
world that market will be supplied. Twenty-six states forbid by law 
the sale of their own "protected" game, but twenty of them do not 
expressly prohibit the sale of game stolen from neighboring states ! That 
is a very, very weak point in the laws of all those states. A child can see 
how it works. Take Pittsburgh as a case in point. 

In the winter and spring of 1912 the State Game Commission of 
Pennsylvania found that quail and ruffed grouse were being sold in 
Pittsburgh, in large quantities. The state laws were well enforced, and 
it was believed that the birds were not being killed in Pennsylvania. 
Some other state was being robbed! 

The Game Commission went to work, and in a very short time certain 
game-dealers of Pittsburgh were arrested. At first they tried to bluff 
their way out of their difficulty, and even went as far as to bring charges 
against the game-warden whom the Commission had instructed to buy 
some of their illegal game, and pay for it. But the net of the law tightened . 
upon them so quickly and so tightly that they threw up their hands and 
begged for mercy. 

It was found that those Pittsburgh game-dealers were selling quail 
and grouse that had been stolen in thousands, from the state of Ken- 
tucky! Between the state game laws, working in lovely harmony with 
the Lacey federal law that prohibits the shipment of game illegally killed 
or sold, the whole bad business was laid bare, and signed confessions 
were promptly obtained from the shippers in Kentucky. 

At that very time, a good bill for the better protection of her game 
was before the Kentucky legislature; and a certain member was vigor- 
ously opposing it, as he had successfully done in previous years. He was 
told that the state was being robbed, but refused to believe it. Then a 
signed confession was laid before him, bearing the name of the man who 
was instigating his opposition, — his friend, — who confessed that he had 



68 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 



■i't. 







A Great 



SNOW BUNTING 

" Game Bird " ! Of These. 8,058 Were Pound in 1902 
in one New York Cold-Storage Warehouse 



illegally bought and shipped 
to Pittsburgh over 5,000 
birds. The objector literal- 
ly threw up his hands, and 
said, "I have been wrong! 
Let the bill go through!" 
And it went. 

Before the passage of 
the Bayne law, New York 
City was a "fence" for the 
sale of grouse illegally 
killed in Massachusetts, 
Connecticut, Pennsylva- 
nia, New Jersey and I 
know not how many other 
states. The Bayne law 
stopped all that business, 
abruptly and forever; and 
if the ruffed grouse, quail and ducks of the Eastern States are offered for 
sale in Chicago, Cincinnati, Baltimore and Washington, the people of 
New York and Massachusetts can at least be assured that they are not 
to blame. Those two states now maintain no "fences" for the sale of 
game that has been stolen from other states. They have both set their 
houses in order, and set two examples for forty other states to follow. 

The remedy for all this miserable game-stealing, law-breaking busi- 
ness is simple and easily obtained. Let each state of the United States 
and each province and Canada enact a Bayne law, absolutely prohibiting 
the sale of all wild native game, and the thing is done ! But nothing short 
of that will be really effective. It will not do at all to let state laws rest 
with merely forbidding the sale of game "protected by the State;" for 
that law is full of loop-holes. It does much good service, yes; but what 
earthly objection can there be in any state to the enactment of a law 
that is sweepingly effective, and which can not be evaded, save through 
the criminal connivance of officers of the law ? 

By way of illustration, to show what the sale of wild game means to 
the remnant of our game, and the wicked slaughter of non-game birds to 
which it leads, consider these figures: 

Dead Birds Found in one Cold Storage House in New York 

IN 1902. 



Snow Buntings 8,058 

Sandpipers 7,607 

Plover 5,218 

Snipe 7,003 

Yellow-legs 788 



Grouse 7,560 

Quail 4,385 

Ducks 1,756 

Bobolinks 288 

Woodcock 96 



The fines for this lot, if imposed, would have amounted to $1,168,316 



GUERRILLAS OF DESTRUCTION 69 

Shortly after that seizure American quail became so scarce that in 
effect they totally disappeared from the banquet tables of New York. I 
can not recall having been served with one since 1903, but the little Egyp- 
tian quail can be legally imported and sold when officially tagged. 

Few persons away from the firing line realize the far-reaching effects 
of the sale of wild game. Here are a few flashes from the searchlight : 

At Hangkow, China, Mr. C. William Beebe found that during his 
visit in 1911, over 46,000 pheasants of various species were shipped from 
that port on one cold-storage steamer to the London market. And this 
when English pheasants were selling in the Covent Garden market at 
from two to three shillings each, for fresh birds ! 

In 1910, 1,200 ptarmigan from Norway, bound for the Chicago mar- 
ket, passed through the port of New York, — not by any means the first 
or the last shipment of the kind. The epicures of Chicago are being per- 
mitted to comb the game out of Norway. 

In 1910, 70,000 dozen Egyptian quail were shipped to Europe from 
Alexandria, Egypt. Just why that species has not already been extermi- 
nated, is a zoological mystery ; but extermination surely will come some 
day, and I think it will be in the near future. 

The coast of China has been raked and scraped for wild ducks to ship 
to New York, — prior, to the passage of the Bayne law! I have forgotten 
the figures that once were given me, but they were an astonishing num- 
ber of thousands for the year. 

The Division of Negroes and Poor Whites who kill song and other 
birds indiscriminately will be found in a separate chapter. 

The Division of "Resident" Game-Butchers. — This refers to the 
men who live in the haunts of big game, where wardens are the most of 
the time totally absent, and where bucks, does and fawns of hoofed big 
game may be killed in season and out of season, with impunity. It in- 
cludes guides, ranchmen, sheep-herders, cowboys, miners, lumbermen 
and floaters generally. In times past, certain taxidermists of Montana 
promoted the slaughter of wild bison in the Yellowstone Park, and it was 
a pair of rascally taxidermists who killed, or caused to be killed in Lost 
Park, in 1897, the very last bison of Colorado. 

It seems to be natural for the minds of men who live in America in 
the haunts of big game to drift into the idea that the wild game around 
them is all theirs. Very few of them recognize the fact that every other 
man, woman and child in a given state or province has vested rights in 
its wild game. It is natural for a frontiersman to feel that because he is 
in the wilds he has a God-given right to li-ve off the country ; but to-day 
that idea is totally wrong! If some way can not be found to curb that all- 
pervading propensity among our frontiersmen, then we may as well bid 
all our open-field big game a long farewell; for the deadly "residents" 
surely will exterminate it, outside the game preserves. The "residents" 
are, in my opinion, about ten times more destructive than the sportsmen. 
A sportsman in quest of large game is in the field only from ten to thirty 



70 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

days; all his movements are known, and all his trophies are seen and 
counted. His killing is limited by law, and upon him the law is actually 
enforced. Often a resident hunts the whole twelve months of the year, — 
for food, for amusement, and for trophies to sell. Rarely does a game 
warden reach his cabin; because the wardens are few, the distances 
great and the frontier cabins are widely scattered. 

Mr. Carl Pickhardt told me of a guide in Newfoundland who had a 
shed in the woods hanging full of bodies of caribou, and who admitted to 
him that while the law allowed him five caribou each year, he killed 
each year about twenty-five. 

Mr. J. M. Phillips knows of a mountain in British Columbia, once 
well stocked with goats, on which the goats have been completely ex- 
terminated by one man who lives within easy striking distance of them, 
and who finds goat meat to his liking. 

I have been reliably informed that in 1911, at Haha Lake, near Grande 
Bay, Saguenay District, P. Q., one family of six persons killed thirty-four 
woodland caribou and six moose. This meant the waste of about 14,000 
pounds of good meat, and the death of several female animals. 

In 1886 I knew a man named Owens who lived on the head of Sunday 
Creek, Montana, who told me that in 1884-5 he killed thirty-five mule 
deer for himself and family. The family ate as much as possible, the 
dogs ate all they could, and in the spring the remainder spoiled. Now 
there is not a deer, an antelope, or a sage grouse within fifty miles of that 
lifeless waste. 

Here is a Montana object lesson on the frame of mind of the "resi- 
dent" hunter, copied from Outdoor Life Magazine (Denver) for Febru- 
ary, 1912. It is from a letter to the Editor, written by C. B. Davis. 

November 27, 28, 29, and 30, 1911, will remain a red letter day with a half thou- 
sand men for years to come. These half thousand men gathered along the border of the 
Yellowstone National Park, near Gardiner, Montana, at a point known as Buffalo 
Flats, to exterminate elk. The snow had driven the elk down to the foothills, and 
Buffalo Flats is on the border of the park and outside the park. The elk entered this 
little valley for food. Like hungry wolves, shooters, not hunters, gathered along the 
border waiting to catch an elk off the "reservation" and kill it. 

On November 27th about 1500 elk crossed the line, and the slaughter began. I 
have not the data of the number killed this day, but it was hundreds. 

On the 28th, twenty-two stepped over and were promptly executed. Like Custer's 
band, not one escaped. On the evening of the 28th, 600 were sighted just over the line, 
and the army of 125 brave men entrenched themselves for the battle which was ex- 
pected to open next morning. Before daylight of the 29th the battle began. The elk- 
were over the line, feeding on Buffalo Flats. One hundred and twenty-five men poured 
bullets into this band of 600 elk till the ground was red with blood and strewn with 
carcasses, and in their madness they shot each other. One man was shot through the 
ear, — a close call; another received a bullet through his coat sleeve, and another was 
shot through the bowels and can't live. 

My informer told me he participated in the slaughter, and while he would not 
take fifty dollars for what he saw, and the experience he went through, yet he would not 
go through it again for $1,000. When my informer got back to Gardiner that day there 
were four sleigh loads of elk, each load containing from twenty to thirty-five elk, be- 
sides thirty-two mules and horses carrying one to two each. This was only a part of 



GUERRILLAS OF DESTRUCTION 71 

the slaughter. Hundreds more were carried to other points; and this was only one 
day's work. 

Hundreds of wounded elk wandered back into the park to die, and others died out- 
side the park. The station at Livingston, Montana, for a week looked like a packing 
house. Carcassef were piled up on the trucks and depot platform. The baggage cars 
were loaded with elk going to points east and west of Livingston. 

Maybe this is all right. Maybe the government can't stop the elk from crossing 
the line. Maybe the elk were helped over; but it strikes me there is something wrong 
somewhere. 

The Division of Hired Laborers. — The scourge of lumber-camps 
in big-game territory, the mining camps and the railroad-builders is a 
long story, and if told in detail it would make several chapters. Their 
awful destruotiveness is well known. It is a common thing for "the 
boss" to hire a hunter to kill big game to supply the hungry outfit, and 
save beef and pork. 

The abuses arising from this source easily could be checked, and finally 
suppressed. A ten-line law would do the business, — forbidding any per- 
son employed in any camp of sheep men, cattle men, lumbermen, miners, 
railway laborers or excavators to own or use a rifle in hunting wild game ; 
and forbidding any employer of labor to feed those laborers, or permit 
them_ to be fed, on the flesh of wild game mammals or birds. "Camp" 
laborers are not "pioneers;" not by a long shot! They are soldiers of 
Commerce, and makers of money. 

A Mountain Sheep Case in Colorado. — The state of Colorado 
sincerely desires to protect and perpetuate its slender remnant of moun- 
tain sheep, but as usual the Lawless Miscreant is abroad to thwart the 
efforts of the guardians of the game. Every state that strives to protect 
its big game has such doings as this to contend with : 

In the winter of 1911-12, a resident poacher brought into Grant, Colo- 
rado, a lot of mountain sheep meat for sale; and he actually sold it to 
residents of that town! The price was six cents per pound. A lot of it 
was purchased by the railway station-agent. I have no doubt that the 
same man who did that job, which was made possible only by the co- 
operation of the citizens of Grant, will try the same poaching-and-selling 
game next winter, unless the ^tate Game Commissioner is able to bring 
him to book. 

A Wyoming Case in Point. — As a fair sample of what game wardens, 
and the general public, are sometimes compelled to endure through the 
improper decisions of judges, I will cite this case: 

In the Shoshone Mountains of northern Wyoming, about fifty miles 
or so from the town of Cody, in the winter of 1911-12 a man was engaged 
in trapping coyotes. It was currently reported that he had been "driven 
out of Montana and Idaho." He had scores of traps. He baited his 
traps with the flesh of deer, elk calves and grouse, all illegally killed and 
illegally used for that purpose. A man of my acquaintance saw some of 
this game meat actually used as described. 

The man was a notorious character, and cruel in the extreme. Finallv 



72 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

a game warden caught him red-handed, arrested him. and took him to 
Cody for trial. It happened that the judge on the bench had once 
trapped with him, and therefore "he set the game-killer free, while the 
game- warden was roasted." 

That wolf-trapper once took into the mountains a horse, to kill and 
use as bear-bait. The animal was blind in one eye, and because it would 
not graze precisely where the wolfer desired it to remain, he deliberately 
destroyed the sight of its good eye, and left it for days, without the abil- 
ity to find water. 

Think of the fate of any wild animal that unkind Fat^ places at the 
mercy of such a man ! | 



CHAPTER VIII 
UNSEEN FOES OF WILD LIFE 

Quite unintentionally on his part, Man, the arch destroyer and the 
most predatory and merciless of all animal species except the wolves, 
has rendered a great service to all the birds that live or nest upon the 
ground. His relentless pursuit and destruction of the savage-tempered, 
strong-jawed fur-bearing animals is in part the salvation of the ground 
birds of to-day and yesterday. If the teeth and claws had been per- 
mitted to multiply unchecked down to the present time, with man's 
warfare on the upland game proceeding as it has done, scores upon 
scores of species long ere this would have been exterminated. 

But the slaughter of the millions of North American foxes, wolves, 
weasels, skunks, and mink has so overwhelmingly reduced the four- 
footed enemies of the birds that the balance of wild Nature has been 
preserved. As a rule, the few predatory wild animals that remain are 
not slaughtering the birds to a serious extent; and for this we may well 
be thankful. 

The Domestic Cat. — In such thickly settled communities as our 
northern states, from the Atlantic coast to the sandhills of Kansas and 
Nebraska, the domestic cat is probably the greatest four-footed scourge 
of bird life. Thousands of persons who never have seen a hunting cat 
in action will doubt this statement, but the proof of its truthfulness is 
only too painfully abundant. 

Unhappily it is the way of the hunting cat to stalk unseen, and to 
kill the very birds that are most friendly with man, and most helpful 
to him in his farming and fruit-growing business. The quail is about 
the only game bird that the cat affects seriously, and to it the cat is very 
destructive. It is the robin, catbird, thrush, bluebird, dove, woodpecker, 
chickadee, phoebe, tanager and other birds of the lawn, the garden and 
orchard that afford good hunting for sly and savage old Thomas. 

When I was a boy in my 'teens, I had a lasting series of object lessons 
on the cat as a predatory animal. Our "Betty" was the most ambitious 
and successful domestic-cat hunter of wild mammals of which I ever 
have heard. To her, rats and mice were mere child's-play, and after a 
time their pursuit offered such tame sport that she sought fresh fields 
for her prowess. Then she brought in young rabbits, chipmunks and 
thirteen-lincd spermophiles, and once she came in, quite exhausted, half 
dragging and half carrying a big, fat pocket gopher. With her it seemed 
to be a point of honor that she should bring in her game and display it. 
Little did we realize then that in course of time the wild birds would 



74 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

become so scarce that their slaughter by house cats would demand legis- 
lative action in the states. 

In considering the hunting cat, let us call in a credible witness of the 
effects of domestic cats on the bob white. The following is an eye-witness 
report, by Ernest B. Beardsley, in Outdoor Life for April, 1912. The 
locality was Wellington, Sumner County, Kansas. 

In the meantime, old Queen was having a high old time up ahead, some hundred 
feet by then, running up the bank and back down in the draw. We had hardly caught 
up when up goes Mr. Savage's gun and he gives both barrels. I had seen nothing up 
to date, but I didn't have long to wait, for by the time I got up to him and the dog, 
they were both in the high grass and had a great, big, common gray maltese house-cat; 
and Queen had a half-eaten quail that Mr. Cat was busy with when disturbed. 

Well, we followed the draw across the field and got nine of a covey of sixteen that 
had been ahead of Mr. Cat; and about four o'clock that evening we killed another 
white-and-gray cat. Wliile driving home that night, Mr. Savage told me that he had 
killed fifty or more in three or four years. They will get in a draw full of tumble-grass, 
on a cold day when quail don't like to fly, and stay right with them; and even after 
feeding on two or three, they will lie and watch, and when the covey moves, they move. 
When eating time comes around they are at it again, and to a covey of young birds 
they are sure death to the whole covey. 

Well, Will told me never to overlook a house-cat that I found as far as a quarter 
of a mile from a farm or ranch, for if they have not already turned wild, they are 
learning how easy it is to hunt and live on game, and are almost as bad. We found 
Mr. Black-and-White Hunter had eaten two quail just before we killed him that 
evening. I would rather not write what Mr. Savage said when we found the remains 
of a partly-eaten bird. 

My advice is, don't let tame cats get away when found out hunting; for the 
chances are they have not seen a home in months, and maybe years, — and say! but 
they do get big and bad. When you meet one, give it to him good, and don't 
let your dog run up to him until he is out for keeps. I learned afterwards that was 
how Will knew it was a cat. Queen had learned to back off and call for help on cats 
some years before. 

In the New York Zoological Park, we have had troubles of our own 
with marauding cats. They establish themselves in a day, and quickly 
learn where to seek easy game and good cover. In the daytime they lie 
close in the thick brush, exactly as tigers do in India, but if not molested 
for a period of days, they become bold and attack game in open view. 
One bird-killing cat was so shy of man that it was only after two weeks 
of hard hunting (mornings and evenings) that it was killed. 

We have seen cats catch and kill gray squirrels, chipmunks, robins 
and thrushes, and have found the feathers of slaughtered quail. Once 
we had gray rabbits breeding in the park, and their number reached 
between eighty and ninety. For a time they fearlessly hopped about in 
sight from our windows, and they were of great interest to visitors and to 
all of us. Then the cats began upon them; and in one year there was 
not a rabbit to be seen, save at rare intervals. At the same time the 
chipmunks of the park were almost exterminated. 

That was the last straw, and we began a vigorous war upon those 
wild and predatory cats. The cats came off second best. We killed 
every cat that was found hunting in the park, and we certainly got some 



UNSEEN FOES OF WILD LIFE 75 

that were big and bad. We eliminated that pest, and we are keeping 
it eliminated. And with what result? 

In 1911 a covey of eleven quail came and settled in our grounds, and 
have remained there. Twenty times at least during the past eight months 
(winter and spring) I have seen the flock on the granite ledge not more 
than forty feet from the rear window of my office. Last spring when I 
left the Administration Building at six o'clock, after the visitors had 
gone, I found two half-grown rabbits calmly roosting on the door-mat. 
The rabbits are slowly coming back, and the chipmunks are visibly in- 
creasing in number. The gray squirrels now chase over the walks without 
fear of any living thing, and our ducklings and young guineas and pea- 
cocks are safe once more. 

That cats destroy annually in the United States several millions of 
very valuable birds, seems fairly beyond question. I believe that in 
settled regions they are worse than weasels, foxes, skunks and mink 
combined; because there are about one hundred times as many of them, 
and those that hunt are not afraid to hunt in the daytime. Of course I 
am not saying that all cats hunt wild game; but in the country I 
believe that fully one-half of them do. 

I am personally acquainted with a cat in Indiana, on the farm of 
relatives, which is notorious for its hunting propensities, and its remark- 
able ability in capturing game. Even the lady who is joint owner of the 
cat feels very badly about its destructiveness, and has said, over and over 
again, that it ought to be killed; but the cat is such a family pet that no 
one in the family has the heart to destroy it, and as yet no stranger has 
come forward to play the part of executioner. The lady in question 
assured me that to her certain knowledge that particular cat would watch 
a nestful of young robins week after week until they had grown up to 
such a size that they were almost ready to fly; then he would kill them 
and devour them. Old "Tommy" was too wise to kill the robins when 
they were unduly small. 

In a great book entitled Useful Birds and Their Protection, by E. 
H. Forbush, State Ornithologist of Massachusetts, and published by the 
Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture in 1905, there appears, on 
page 362, many interesting facts on this subject. For example: 

Mr. William Brewster tells of an acquaintance in Maine, who said that his cat 
killed about fifty birds a year. Mr. A. C. Dike wrote [to Mr. Forbush] of a cat owned 
by a family, and well cared for. They watched it through one season, and found that 
it killed fifty-eight birds, including the young in five nests. 

Nearly a hundred correspondents, scattered through all the counties of the state, 
report the cat as one of the greatest enemies of -birds. The reports that have come in 
of the torturing and killing of birds by cats are absolutely sickening. The number of 
birds killed by them in this state is appalling. 

Some cat lovers believe that each cat kills on the average not more than ten birds 
a year; but I have learned of two instances where more than that number were killed 
in a single day, and another where seven were killed. If we assume, however, that the 
average cat on the farm kills but ten birds per year, and that there is one cat to each 
farm in Massachusetts, we have, in round numbers, seventy thousand cats, killing 
seven hundred thousand birds annually. 



76 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 



In Mr. Forbush's book 
there is an illustration of 
the cat which killed fift}^- 
eight birds in one year, 
and the animal was photo- 
graphed with a dead robin 
in its mouth. The portrait 
is reproduced in this chap- 
ter. 

Last year, a strong effort 
was made in Massachusetts 
to enact a law requiring 
cats to be licensed. On ac- 
count of the amount of 
work necessary in passing 
the no-sale-of-game bill, 
that measure was not 
pressed, and so it did not 
become a law ; but another 
year it will undoubtedly be 
passed, for it is a good bill, 
and extremely necessary at 
this time. Such a law is 
needed in every state! 

There is a mark by which 
you may instantly and in- 
fallibly know the worst of 
the wild cats— by their 
presence away from home, 
hunting in the open. Kill all 
such, wherever found. The 
harmless cats are domestic 

in their tastes, and stay close to the family fireside and the kitchen. 
Being properly fed, they have no temptation to become hunters. There 
are cats and cats, just as there are men and men: some tolerable, many 
utterly intolerable. No sweeping sentiment for all cats should be allowed 
to stand in the way of the abatement of the hunting-cat nuisances. 

Of all men, the farmer cannot afford the luxury of their existence! It is 
too expensive. With him it is a matter of dollars, and cash out of pocket 
for every hunting cat that he tolerates in his neighborhood. There are 
two places in which to strike the hunting cats : in the open, and in the 
state legislature. 

While this chapter was in the hands of the compositors, the hunting 
cat and gray rabbit shown in the accompanying illustration were brought 
in by a keeper. 

Dogs as Destroyers of Birds. — I have received many letters from 
protectors of wild life informing me that the destruction of ground-nesting 




A HUNTING CAT AND ITS VICTIM 

This Cat had fed so bountifully on the Rabbits and Squirrels 

of the Zoological Park, that it ate only the Brain 

of this Gray Rabbit 



UNSEEN FOES OF WILD LIFE 77 

birds, and especially of upland game birds, by roaming dogs, has in some 
localities become a great curse to bird life. Complaints of this kind have 
come from New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and else- 
where. Usually the culprits are hunting dogs — setters, pointers and hounds. 

Now, surely it is not necessary to set forth here any argument on 
this subject. It is not open to argument, or academic treatment of any 
kind. The cold fact is: 

In the breeding season of birds, and while the young birds are in- 
capable of quick and strong flight, all dogs, of every description, should 
be restrained from free hunting ; and all dogs found hunting in the woods 
during the season referred to should be arrested, and their owners should 
be fined twenty dollars for each offense. Incidentally, one-half the fine 
should go to the citizen who arrests the dog. The method of restraining 
hunting dogs should devolve upon dog owners ; and the law need only 
prohibit or punish the act. 

Beyond a doubt, in states that still possess quail and ruffed grouse, 
free hunting by hunting dogs leads to great destruction of nests and 
broods during the breeding season. 

Telegraph and Telephone Wires. — Mr. Daniel C. Beard has 
strongly called my attention to the slaughter of birds by telegraph 
wires that has come under his personal observation. His country home, 
at Redding, Connecticut, is near the main line of the New York, New 
Haven and Hartford Railway, along which a line of very large poles 
carries a great number of wires. The wires are so numerous that they 
form a barrier through which it is difficult for any bird to fly and come 
out alive and unhurt. 

Mr. Beard says that among the birds killed or crippled by flying 
against those wires near Redding he has seen the following species : olive- 
backed thrush, white-throated sparrow and other sparrows, oriole, blue 
jay, rail, ruffed grouse, and woodcock. It is a common practice for 
employees of the railwa3% and others living along the line, to follow the 
line and pick up on one excursion enough birds for a pot-pie. 

Beyond question, the telegraph and telephone wires of the United 
States annually exact a heavy toll in bird life, and claim countless thou- 
sands of victims. They may well be set down as one of the un.seen 
forces destructive to birds. 

Naturally, we ask, what can be done about it? 

I am told that in Scotland such slaughter is prevented by the 
attachment of small tags or discs to the telephone wires, at intervals 
of a few rods, sufficiently near that they attract the attention of flying 
birds, and reveal the line of an obstruction This system should be 
adopted in all regions where the conditions are such that birds kill them- 
selves against telegraph wires, and an excellent place to begin would be 
along the line of the N. Y., N. H. & H. Railway.^, 

Wild Animals. — Beyond question, it is both desirable and necessary 
that any excess of wild animals that prey upon our grouse, quail, pheas- 



78 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

ants, woodcock, snipe, mallard duck, shore birds and other species that 
nest on the ground, should be killed. Since we must choose between the 
two, the birds have it ! Weasels and foxes and skunks are interesting, and 
they do much to promote the hilarity of life in rural districts, but they 
do not destroy insects, and are of comparatively little value as destroyers 
of the noxious rodents that prey upon farm crops. While a few persons 
may dispute the second half of this proposition, the burden of proof that 
my view is wrong will rest upon them ; and having spent eighteen years 
"on the farm," I think I am right. If there is any positive evidence 
tending to prove that the small carnivores that we class as "vermin" 
are industrious and persistent destroyers of noxious rodents — pocket 
gophers, moles, field-mice and rats — or that they do not kill wild birds 
numerously, now is the time to produce it, because the tide of public 
sentiment is strongly setting against the weasels, mink, foxes and skunks. 
(Once upon a time, a shrewd young man in the Zoological Park discovered 
a weasel hiding behind a stone while devouring a sparrow that it had 
just caught and killed. He stalked it successfully, seized it in his bare 
hand, and, even though bitten, made good the capture.) 

The State of Pennsylvania is extensively wooded, with forests and 
with brush which affords excellent home quarters and breeding grounds 
for mammalian "vermin." The small predatory mammals are so 
seriously destructive to ruffed grouse and other ground birds that the 
State Game Commission is greatly concerned. When the hunter's license 
law is enacted, as it very surely will be at the next session of the legis- 
lature (1913), a portion of the $70,000 that it will produce each year 
will be used by the commission in paying bounties on the destruction 
of the surplus of vermin. Through the pursuit of vermin, any farmer 
can easily win enough bounties to more than pay the cost of his annual 
hunting license (one dollar), and the farmers' boys will find a new in- 
terest in life. 

In some portions of the Rocky Mountain region, the assaults of the 
large predatory mammals and birds on the young of the big-game species 
occasionally demand special treatment. In the Yellowstone Park the 
pumas multiplied to such an extent and killed so many young elk that 
their number had to be systematically reduced. To that end "Buffalo" 
Jones was sent out by the Government to find and destroy the intolerable 
surplus of pumas. In the course of his campaign he killed about forty, 
much to the benefit of the elk herds. Around the entrance to the den 
of a big old male puma, Mr. Jones found the skulls and other remains 
of nine elk calves that "the old Tom" had killed and carried there. 

Pumas and lynxes attack and kill mountain sheep; and the golden 
eagle is very partial to mountain sheep lambs and mountain goat 
kids. It will not answer to permit birds of that bold and predatory 
species to become too numerous in mountains inhabited by goats and 
sheep ; and the fewer^^l mountain lions the better, for they, like the 
lynx and eagle, have TTothing to live upon save the game. 

The wolves and coyotes have learned to seek the ranges of cattle. 



UNSEEN FOES OF WILD LIFE 



79 



horses and sheep, 
where they still do 
immense damage, 
chiefly in killing young 
stock. In spite of the 
great sums that have 
been paid out by west- 
ern states in bounties 
for the destruction of 
wolves, in many, many 
places the gray wolf 
still persists, and can 
not be exterminated. 
To the stockmen of 
the west the wolf ques- 
tion is a serious niat- 
ter. The stockmen of 
Montana say that a 
government expert 
once told them how to 
get rid of the gray 
wolves. His instruc- 
tions were: "Locate 
the dens, and kill the young in the dens, soon after they are born!" 
"All very easy to say, but a trifle difficult to do!" said my informant; 
and the ranchman seem to think they are yet a long way from a solution 
of the wolf question. 

During the past year the destruction of noxious predatory animals 
in the national forest reserves has seriously occupied the attention of the 
United States Bureau of Forestry. By the foresters of that bureau the 
following animals were destroyed in fifteen western states: 




THE EASTERN RED SQUIRREL 
A Great Destroyer of Birds 



213 Bears 

88 Mountain Lions 
172 Gray Wolves 

69 Wolf Pups 



6,487 Coyotes 
870 Wild-Cats 
72 Lynxes 

7,971 



In 1910 the total was 9,103. 
The Red Squirrel. — Once in a great while, conditions change in 
subtle ways, wild creatures unexpectedly increase in number, and a com- 
munity awakens to the fact that some wild species has become a public 
nuisance. In a small city park, even gray squirrels niay breed and be- 
come so fearfully numerous that, in their restless quest for food, they 
may ravage the nests of the wild birds, kill and devour the young, and 
become a pest. In the Zoological Park, in 1903, we found that the red 
squirrels had increased to such a horde that th«y were driving out all 
our nesting wild birds, driving out the gray squirrels, and making them- 
selves intolerably obnoxious. We shot sixty of them, and brought the 
total down to a reasonable number. Wherever he is or whatever his 



80 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 



numerical strength, the red 
squirrel is a bad citizen, and, 
while we do not by any 
means favor his extermina- 
tion, he should resolutely be 
kept within bounds by the 
rifle. 

When a crow nested in our 
woods, near the Beaver Pond, 
we were greatly pleased ; but 
with the feeding of the first 
brood, the crows began to 
carry off ducklings from the 
wild-fowl pond. After one 
crow had been seen to seize 
and carry away five young 
ducks in one forenoon, we 
decided that the constitu- 
tional limit had beenreached, 
for we did not propose that 
all our young mallards should 
be swept into the awful vor- 
tex of that crow nest. We 
took those young crows and 
reared them by hand; but 
the old one had acquired a 
bad habit, and she persisted 
in carrying off young ducks 
until we had to end her exis- 
tence with a gun. It was a painful operation, but there was no other 
way. 

Bird-Destroying Birds. — There are several species of birds that 
may at once be put under sentence of death for their destructiveness 
of useful birds, without any extenuating circumstances worth mention- 
ing. Four of these are Cooper's Hawk, the Sharp-Shinned Hawk, Pigeon 
Hawk and Duck Hawk. Fortunately these species are not so numerous 
that we need lose any sleep over them. Indeed, I think that today it 
would be a mighty good collector who could find one specimen in seven 
days' hunting. Like all ether species, these, too, are being shot out of 
of our bird fauna. 

Several species of bird-eating birds are trembling in the balance, 
and under grave suspicion. Some of them are the Great Horned Owl, 
Barred Owl, Screech Owl, Butcher Bird or Great Northern Shrike. The 
only circumstance that saves these birds from instant condemnation is 
the delightful amount of rats, mice, moles, gophers and noxious insects 
that they annually consume. In view of the awful destructiveness of 
the accursed bubonic-plague-carrying rat, we are impelled to think long 
before placing in our killing list even the great horned owl, who really 




COOPER'S HAWK 
A Species to be Destroyed 



UNSEEN FOES OF WILD LIFE 



81 



does levy a heavy tax on our 
upland game birds. As to the 
butcher bird, we feel that we 
ought to kill him, but in view 
of his record on wild mice and 
rats, we hesitate, and finally 
decline. 

Snakes. — Mr. Thomas M. 
Upp, a close and long obser- 
ver of wild things wishes it 
distinctly understood that 
while the common black- 
snakes and racers are prac- 
tically harmless to birds, the 
Pilot Black -Snake, — long, 
thick and truculent, — is a 
great scourge to nesting birds. 
It seems to be deserving of 
death. Mr. Upp speaks from 
])ersonal knowledge, and his 
condemnation of the species 
referred to is quite sweeping. 
At the same time Mr. Ray- 
mond L. Ditmars points out 
the fact that this serpent feeds 
during 6 months of the year 

on mice, and in doing so renders good service. In the vSouth it is called 

the "Mouse Snake." 




SH.\RP-SIIINNED HAWK 
A Species to be Destroyed 




Photo by A. C Dyke 

THE CAT THAT KILLED 58 BIRDS IN ONE YEAR 
From Mr. Forbush's Book 



CHAPTER rX 
THE DESTRUCTION OF WILD LIFE BY DISEASES 

Every cause that has the effect of reducing the total of wild-life 
population is now a matter of importance to mankind. The violent 
and universal disturbance of the balance of Natiu-e that already has 
taken place throughout the temperate and frigid zone offers not only 
food for thought, but it calls for vigorous action. 

There are vast sections in the populous centres of western civiliza- 
tion where the destruction of species, even to the point of extermina- 
tion, is fairly inevitable. It is the way of Christian man to destroy 
all wild life that comes within the sphere of influence of his iron heel. 
With the exception of the big game, this destruction is largely a tem- 
peramental result, peculiar to the highest civilization. In India where 
the same fields have been plowed for wheat and dahl and raggi for at 
least 2,000 years, the Indian antelope, or "black buck," the saras crane 
and the adjutant stalk through the crops, and the nilgai and gazelle 
inhabit the eroded ravines in an agricultural land that averages 1,200 
people to the square mile ! 

We have seen that even in farming country, where mud villages 
are as thick as farm houses in Nebraska, wild animals and even hoofed 
game can live and hold their own through hundreds of years of close 
association with man. The explanation is that the Hindus regard wild 
animals as creatures entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, 
and they are not anxious to shoot every wild animal that shows its head. 
In the United States, nearly every game-inhabited community is ani- 
mated by a feeling that every wild animal must necessarily be killed 
as soon as seen; and this sentiment often leads to disgraceful things. 
For instance, in some parts of New England a deer straying into a town 
is at once beset by the hue and cry, and it is chased and assaulted until 
it is dead, by violent and disgraceful means. New York State, however, 
seems to have outgrown that spirit. During the past ten years, at least 
a dozen deer in distress have been rescued from the Hudson River, or 
in inland towns, or in barnyards in the suburbs of Yonkers and New 
York, and carefully cared for until "the zoo people" could be communi- 
cated with. Last winter about 13 exhausted grebes and one loon were 
picked up, cared for and finally shipped with tender care to the Zoo- 
logical Park. One distressed dovekie was picked up, but failed to siir- 
vive. 

The sentiment for the conservation of wild life has changed the 
mental attitude of very many people. The old Chinese-Malay spirit 



DESTRUCTION BY DISEASES 83 

which cries "Kill! Kill!" and at once runs amuck among suddenly 
discovered wild animals, is slowly being replaced by a more humane 
and intelligent sentiment. This is one of the hopeful and encourag- 
ing signs of the times. 

The destruction of wild animals by natural causes is an interesting 
subject, even though painful. We need to know how much destruction 
is wrought by influences wholly beyond the control of man, and a few 
cases must be cited. 

Rinderpest in Africa. — Probably the greatest slaughter ever 
wrought upon wild animals by diseases during historic times, was by 
rinderpest, a cattle plague which afflicted Africa in the last decade of 
the previous century. Originally, the disease reached Africa by way 
of Egypt, and came as an importation from Europe. From Egypt it 
steadily traveled southward, reaching Somaliland in 1889. In 1896 it 
reached the Zambesi River and entered Rhodesia. From thence it went on 
southward almost to the Cape. Not only did it sweep away ninety per- 
cent of the native cattle but it also destroyed more than seventy-five 
per cent of the buffalos, antelopes and other hoofed game of Rhodesia. 
It was feared that many species would be completely exterminated, 
but happily that fear was not realized. The buffalo and antelope herds 
were fifteen years in breeding up again to a reasonable number, but 
thanks to the respite from hunters which they enjoyed for several years, 
finally they did recover. Throughout British East Africa the supply of 
big game in 1905 was very great, but since that time it has been very 
greatly diminished by shooting. 

Caribou Disease. — From time to time reports have come from the 
Province of Quebec, and I think from Maine and New Brunswick also, 
of many caribou having died of disease. The nature of that disease 
has remained a mystery, because it seems that no pathologist ever has 
had an opportunity to investigate it. Fortunately, however, the alleged 
disease never has been sufficiently wide-spread or continuous to make 
appreciable inroads on the total number of caribou, and apparently 
the trouble has been local. 

Scab in Mountain Sheep. — "Scab" is a contagious and persist- 
ent skin disease that affects sheep, and is destructive when not con- 
trolled. Fifteen years ago it prevailed in some portions of the west. In 
Colorado it has several times been reported that many bighorn moun- 
tain"" sheep were killed by "scab," which was contracted on wild moun- 
tain pastures that had been gone over by domestic sheep carrying that 
disease. From the reports current at that time, we inferred that about 
200 mountain sheep had been affected. It was feared that the disease 
would spread through the wild flocks and become general, but this did 
not occur, It seems that the remnant flocks had become so isolated 
from one another that the isolation of the affected flocks saved the others. 

Lumpy-Jaw in Antelope and Sheep. — It is a lamentable fact 
that some, at least, of the United States herds of prong-horned antelope 
are afflicted with a very deadly chronic infective disease known as actin- 



84 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

omycosis, or lumpy-jaw. It has been brought into the Zoological 
Park five times, by specimens shipped from Colorado, Texas, Wyoming 
and Montana. I think our first cases came to us in 1902. 

In its early stage this disease is so subtle and slow that it is months 
in developing; and this feature renders it all the more deadly, through 
the spread of infection long before the ailment can be discovered. 

One of our antelope arrivals, apparently in perfect health when 
received, was on general principles kept isolated in rigid quarantine for 
two months. At the expiration of that period, no disease of any kind 
having become manifest, the animal was placed on exhibition, with 
two others that had been in the Park for more than a year, in perfect 
health. 

In one more week the late arrival developed a swelling on its jaw, 
drooled at the corner of the mouth, and became feverish, — sure symptoms 
of the dread disease. At once it was removed and isolated, but in about 
lo days it died. The other two antelopes were promptly attacked, and 
eventually died. 

The course of the disease is very intense, and thus far it has proven 
incurable in our wild animals. We have lost about 10 antelopes from 
it, and one deer, usually, in each case, within ten days or two weeks 
from the discovery of the first outward sign, — the well known swelling 
on the jaw. One case that was detected immediately upon arrival was 
very persistently treated by Dr. Blair, and the animal actually survived 
for four months, but finally it succumbed. From first to last not a 
single case was cured. 

In 1912, the future of the prong-horned antelope in real captivity 
seems hopeless. We have decided not to bring any more specimens to 
our institution, partly because all available candidates seem reasonably 
certain to be afifected with lumpy-jaw, and partly because we are un- 
willing to run further risks of having other hoofed animals inoculated 
by them. Today we are anxiously wondering whether the jaw disease 
of the prong-horn is destined to exterminate the species. Such a catas- 
trophe is much to be feared. This is probably one o^ the reasons why the 
antelope is steadly disappearing, despite protection. 

In 1906 we discovered the existence of actinomycosis among the black 
mountain sheep of northern British Columbia. Two specimens out of 
six were badly affected, the bones of the jaws being greatly enlarged, 
and perforated by deep pits. The black sheep of the Stickine and Is- 
koot regions are so seldom seen by white men, save when a sportsman 
kills his allotment of three specimens, we really do not know anything 
about the extent to which actinomycosis prevails in those herds, or how 
deadly are its effects. One thing seems quite certain, from the appear- 
ance of the diseased skulls found by the writer in the taxidermic labora- 
tory of Frederick Sauter, in New York. The enormous swelling of the 
diseased jaw bones clearly indicates a disease that in some cases affects 
its victim throughout many months. Such a condition as we found in 
those sheep could not have been reached in a few days after the disease 



DESTRUCTION BY DISEASES 85 

became apparent. Now, in our antelopes, the collapse and death of 
the victim usually occured in about 10 days from the time that the 
first swelling was observed: which means a very virulent disease, and 
rapid progress at the climax. The jaw of one of our antelopes, which 
was figured in Dr. Blair's paper in the Eleventh Annual Report of the 
New York Zoological Society (1906) shows only a very slight lesion, in 
comparison with those of the mountain sheep. 

The conclusion is that among the sheep, this disease does not carry 
off its victims in any short period like 10 days. The animal must survive 
for some months after it becomes apparent. At least two parties of 
American sportsmen have shot rams afflicted with this disease, but I 
have no reports of any sheep having been found dead from this cause. 

This disease is well known among domestic cattle, but so far as we 
are aware it never before has been found among wild animals. The black 
sheep herds wherein it was found in British Columbia are absolutely 
isolated from domestic cattle and all their influences, and therefore it 
seems quite certain that the disease developed among the sheep spon- 
taneously, — a remarkable episode, to say the least. Whether it will ex- 
terminate the black mountain sheep species, and in time spread to the 
white sheep of the northwest, is of course a matter of conjecture; but 
there is nothing in the world to prevent a calamity of that kind. The 
white sheep of Yukon Territory range southward until in the Sheslay 
Mountains they touch the sphere of influence of the black sheep, where 
the disease could easily be transmitted. It would be a good thing 
if there existed between the two species a sheepless zone about 200 
miles wide. 

I greatly fear that actinomycosis is destined to play an important 
part in the final extinction that seems to be the impending fate of the 
beautiful and valuable prong-horned antelope. In view of our hard 
experiences, extending through ten years (1902-1912), I think this fear 
is justified. All persons who live in country still inhabited by antelope 
are urged to watch for this disease. If any antelopes are found dead, 
see if the lower jaw is badly swollen and discharging pus. If it is, bury 
the body quickly, burn the ground over, and advise the writer regarding 
the case. 

The Rabbit Plague. — One of the strangest freaks of Nature of 
which we know as effecting the wholesale destruction of wild animals 
by disease is the rabbit plague. In the northern wilderness, and par- 
ticularly central Canada, where rabbits exist in great numbers and 
supply the wants of a large carnivorous population, this plague is well 
known, and among trappers and woodsmen is a common topic of con- 
versation. The best treatment of the subject is to be found in Ernest 
T. Seton's "Life Histories of Northern Animals", Vol. 1, p. 640 et seq. 
From this I quote : 

"Invariably the year of greatest numbers [of rabbits ■ is followed by 
a year of plague, which sweeps them away, leaving few or no rabbits in 
the land. The denser the rabbit population, the more drastically is it 



86 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

ravaged by the plague. They are wiped out in a single spring by epi- 
demic diseases usually characterized by swellings of the throat, sores 
under the armpits and groins, and by diarrhea." 

"The year 1885 was for the country around Carberr}^ 'a rabbit year.' 
the greatest ever known in that country. The number of rabbits was 
incredible. W. R. Hine killed 75 in two hours, and estimated that he 
could have killed 5C0 in a day. The farmers were stricken with fear 
that the rabbit pest of Australia was to be repeated in Manitoba. But 
the years 1886-7 changed all that. The rabbits died until their bodies 
dotted the country in thotisands. The plague seemed to kill all the 
members of the vast host of 1885." 

The strangest item of Mr. Seton's story is yet to be told. In 1890 
Mr. Seton stocked his park at Cos Cob, Conn., with hares and rabbits 
from several widely separated locaHties. In 1903, the plague came and 
swept them all away. Mr. Seton sent specimens to the Zoological Park 
for examination by the Park veterinary surgeon. Dr. W. Reid Blair. 
They were found to be infested by great numbers of a dangerous blood- 
sucking parasite known as Strongylus strigosus, which produces death by 
anemia and emaciation. There were hundreds of those parasites in each 
animal. I assisted in the examination, and was shown by Dr. Blair, 
under the microscope, that Strongylus puts forth eggs literally by hun- 
dreds of thousands ! 

The life history of that parasite is not well known, but it may easily 
develop that the cycle of its maximum destructiveness is seven years, and 
therefore it may be accountable for the seven-year plague among the 
hares and rabbits of the northern United States and Canada. 

Possibly Strongylus strigosus is all that stands between Canada 
and a pest of rabbits like that of Australia. Just why this parasite is 
inoperative in AustraHa, or why it has not been introduced there to 
lessen the rabbit evil, we do not know. Mr. Seton declares that the 
rabbits of his park were "subject to all the ills of the flesh, except 
possibly writer's paralysis and housem. aid's knee." 

Parasitic Infection of Wild Ducks. — The diseases of wild game, 
especially waterfowl, grouse and quail, have caused heavy losses in 
America as well as in European countries, and scientists have been 
carefully investigating the cause and the general nature of the maladies, 
as well as probable methods of prevention and cure. Mr. Geo. Atkinson, 
a well-known practical naturaHst of Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, writes 
as follows to a local paper on this subject, which I find quoted in the 
National Sportsman: 

The • question which has developed these important proportions during the past 
year is that of the extent of the parasitic infection of our wild ducks and other game, and 
the possibiHties of the extended transmission of these parasites to domestic stock, or 
even humanity, by eating. 

The parasites in question are contained in small elliptical cases found underlying 
the surface muscles of the breast, and in advanced cases extending deeper into the 
flesh and the muscular tissues of the legs and wings. They are not noticeable in the 
ordinary process of plucking the bird for the table, and are not found internally, so 



DESTRUCTION BY DISEASES 87 

that the only method of discovering tlieir presence is by slitting the skin of the breast 
and paring it back a few inches when the worm-like sacs will be seen buried in the flesh. 

These parasites have come to my notice periodically during the process of skin- 
ning birds for mounting during the past number of years, but it was only when they 
appeared in unusual numbers last fall that I made inquiries of the biological bureaus 
of Washington and Ottawa for information of their life history and the possibilities of 
their transmission to other hosts. 

Replies from these sources surprised me with the information that very little was 
known of the life history of any of the Sarcosporidia, of which group this was a species. 
Nothing was known of the method of infection or the transference from host to host or 
species to species, and both departments asked for specimens for examination. 

Authorities are a unit in opinion that the question is one of great importance to 
game conservation, and although opinions of the dangers from eating differ somewhat, 
a record is given of a hog fed upon affected flesh developing parasites in the muscles 
in six weeks' time, while a case of a man's death from dropsy was found to be the result 
of development of these parasites in the valves of the heart. 

The ability of these low forms of life to withstand extremes of heat makes it 
necessary for more than ordinary cooking to be assured of killing them, and since their 
presence is unnoted in the ordinary course of dressing the birds for the table, there is 
little doubt that very considerable numbers of these parasites are consumed at our 
tables every season, with results at present unknown to us. 

The species I have found most particularly infected have been mallards, shovellers, 
teal, gadwall and pintails, and the birds, outwardly in the best condition, have fre- 
quently been found loaded with sacs of these parasites and only the turning back of 
the breast skin can disclose their presence. 

The greatest slaughter of wild ducks by disease occured on Great 
Salt Lake, Utah. Until the "duck disease" (intestinal coccidiosis) broke 
out there, in the summer of 1910, the annual market slaughter of ducks 
at the mouth of Bear River had been enormous. When at Salt Lake 
City in 1888 I made an effort to arouse the sportsmen whom I met to 
the necessity of a reform, btit my exhortations fell on deaf ears. Natu- 
rally, the sweeping away of the remaining ducks by disease would suggest 
a heaven-sent judgment upon the slaughterers were it not for the fact that 
the last state of the unfortunate ducks is if anything worse than the first. 

On Oct. 17, 1911, the annual report of the chief of the Biological Sur- 
vey contained the following information on this subject : 

Epidemic Among Wild Ducks on Great Salt Lake. — Following a long dry season, 
which favored the rearing of a large number of wild ducks, but materially reduced the 
area of the feeding ponds, resulting in great overcrowding, a severe epidemic broke out 
about August 1, 1910, among the wild ducks about Great Salt Lake, Utah. Dead 
ducks could be counted by thousands along the shores and the disease raged unabated 
until late fall. Shooting clubs found it necessary to declare a closed season. Some of 
the dead ducks were forwarded to the Biological Survey and were turned over for 
examination to the Bureau of Animal Industry, by the experts of which the disease was 
diagnosed as intestinal coccidiosis. 

Various plans of relieving the situation were tried. The irrigation ditches were 
closed, thus providing the sloughs and ponds with fresh water, and lime was sprinkled 
on the mud flats and duck trails. Great improvement followed this treatment, and 
experiments proved that ducks provided with abundant fresh water and clean food 
began to recover immediately. These methods promised success, but later it was 
proposed that the marshes be drained and exposed to the sun's rays — a course which 
cannot be recommended. That coccidia are not always killed by exposure to the sun 
is shown by their survival on the sites of old chicken yards. An added disadvantage of 
the flan is that draining and drying the marshes would have a bad effect on the natural 
duck food, and upon the birds themselves. 



CHAPTER X 

DESTRUCTION OF WILD LIFE BY THE ELEMENTS 

It is a fixed condition of Nature that whenever and wherever a wild 
species exists in a state of nature, free from the trammels and limita- 
tions that contact with man always imposes, the species is fitted to 
survive all ordinary climatic influences. Freedom of action, and the ex- 
ercise of several options in the line of individual maintenance under 
stress, is essential to the welfare of every wild species. 

A prong-horned antelope herd that is free can drift before a blizzard, 
can keep from freezing by the exercise, and eventually come to shelter. 
Let that same herd drift against a barbed-wire fence five miles long, 
and its whole scheme of self-preservation is upset. The herd perishes 
then and there. 

Cut out the undergrowth of a given section, drain the swamps and 
mow down all the weeds and tall grass, and the next particularly hard 
winter starves and freezes the quail. 

Naturally the cutting of forests, clearing of brush and drainage of 
marshes is more or less calamitous to all the species of birds that inhabit 
such places and find there winter food and shelter. Red-winged black- 
birds and real estate booms can not inhabit the same swamps contem- 
poraneously. Before the relentless march of civilization, the wild In- 
dian, the bison and many of the wild birds must inevitably disappear. 
We cannot change conditions that are as inexorable as death itself. 
The wild life must either adjust itself to the conditions that civilized 
man imposes upon it, or perish. I say "civilized man," for the reason 
that the primitive races of man are not deadly exterminators of species, 
as we are. I know of not one species of wild life that has been extermi- 
nated by savage man without the aid of his civilized peers. 

As civilization marches ever onward, over the prairies, into the bad 
lands and the forests, over the mountains and even into the farthest 
corner of Death Valley, the desert of deserts, the struggle of the wild 
birds, mammals and fishes is daily and hourly intensified. Man must 
help them to maintain themselves, or accept a lifeless continent. The 
best help consists in letting the wild creatures throughly alone, so that 
they can help themselves; but quail often need to be fed in critical 
periods. The best food is wheat screenings placed under little tents 
of straw, bringing food and shelter together. 

In the well settled portions of the United States, such species as quail, 
ruffed grouse, wild turkey, pinnated grouse and sage grouse hang to life 



DESTRUCTION BY THE ELEMENTS 89 

by slender threads. A winter of exceptionally deep snows, much sleet, 
and a late spring always causes grave anxiety among the state game 
wardens. In Pennsylvania a very earnest movement is in progress to 
educate and persuade farmers to feed the quail in winter, and much 
good is being done in that direction. 

Mr. Erasmus Wilson, of the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times is the apos- 
tle of that movement. 

Quail should he fed every winter, in every northern state. The methods 
to be pursued will be mentioned elsewhere. 

By way of illustration, here is a sample game report, from Las Ani- 
mas, Colorado, Feb. 22, 1912: 

"After the most severe winter weather experienced for twenty years 
we are able to compute approximately our loss of feathered life. It is 
seventy-five per cent of the quail throughout the irrigated district, 
and about twenty per cent of meadow-larks. In the rough cedar-covered 
sections south of the Arkansas River, the loss among the quail was 
much lighter. The ground sparrows suffered severely, while the English 
sparrow seems to have come through in good shape. Many cotton-tail 
rabbits starved to death, while the deep, light snow of January made 
them easy prey for hawks and coyotes." (F. T. Webber). 

It would be possible to record many instances similar to the above, 
but why multiply them ? And now behold the cruel corollary : 

At least twenty-five times during the past two years I have heard 
and read arguments by sportsmen against my proposal for a 5-year close 
season for quail, taking the ground that "The sportsmen are not wholly 
toblamefor the scarcity of quail. It is the cold winters that kill them off!'' 

So then, because the fierce winters murder the boh white, wholesale, 
they should not have a chance to recover themselves! Could human beings 
possibly assume a more absurd attitude? 

Yes, it is coldly and incontestably true, that even after such winter 
slaughter as Mr. Webber has reported above, the very next season will 
find the quail hunter joyously taking the field, his face beaming with 
health and good living, to hunt down and shoot to death as many as 
possible of the pitiful 25 per cent remnant that managed to survive the 
pitiless winter. How many quail hunters, think you, ever stayed their 
hands because of "a hard winter on the quail?" I warrant not one out 
of every hundred! How many states in this Union ever put on a close 
season because of a hard winter? I'll warrant that not one ever did; 
and I think there is only one state whose game commissioners have the 
power to act in that way without recourse to the legislature. This situa- 
tion is intolerable. 

Thanks to the splendid codified game laws enacted in New York 
state in 1912, our Conservation Commission can declare a close season 
in any locality, for any length of time, when the state of the game de- 
mands an emergency measure. This act is as follows; and it is a model 
law, which every other state should speedily enact : 



90 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

THE NEW YORK CLOSE-SEASON LAW. 

152. Petition for additional protection; notice of hearings; power to grant additional 
protection; notice of prohibition or regtuation; penalties. 

1. Petition for additional protection. Any citizen of the state may file with the 
commission a petition in writing requesting it to give any species of hsh, other than 
migratory food fish of the sea, or game protected by law, additional or other protection 
than that afforded by the provisions of this article. Such petition shall state the 
grounds upon which such protection is considered necessary, and shall be signed by 
the petitioner with his address. 

2. Notice of hearings. The commission shall hold a public hearing in the locality 
or county to be affected upon the allegations of such petition within twenty days from 
the filing thereof. At least ten days prior to such hearing notice thereof, stating the 
time and place at which such hearing shall be held, shall be advertised in a newspaper 
published in the county to be affected by such additional or other protection. Such 
notice shall state the name and the address of the petitioner, together with a brief state- 
ment of the grounds upon which such application is made, and a copy thereof shall be 
mailed to the petitioner at the address given in such petition at least ten days before 
such hearing. 

J. Power to grant additional protection. If upon such hearing the commission shall 
determine that such species of fish or game, by reason of disease, danger of extermina- 
tion, or from any other cause or reason, requires such additional or other protection, in 
any locality or throughout the state, the commission shall have power to prohibit or 
regulate, during the open season therefor, the taking of such species of fish or game. 
Such prohibition or regulation may be made general throughout the state or confined 
to a particular part or district thereof. 

4. Notice of prohibition or regulation. Any order made by the commission under 
the provisions of this section shall be signed by it, and entered in its minute book. At 
least thirty days before such prohibition or regulation shall take effect, copies of the 
same shall be filed in the office of the clerk issuing hunting and trapping licenses for 
the district to which the prohibition or regulation applies. It shall be the duty of said 
clerks to issue a copy of said prohibition or regulation to each person to whom a hunting 
or trapping license is issued by them ; to mail a copy of such prohibition or regulation 
to each holder of a hunting and trapping license theretofore issued by them and at 
that time in effect, and to post a copy thereof in a conspicuous place in their office. 
At least thirty days before such prohibition or regulation shall take effect the com- 
mission shall cause a notice thereof to be advertised in a newspaper published in the 
county wherein such prohibition or regulation shall take effect. 

5. Penalties. Any person violating the provisions of such prohibition, rule or regu- 
lation shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall, upon conviction, be subject to a fine 
of not to exceed one hundred dollars, or shall be imprisoned for not more than thirty 
days, or both, for each offense, in addition to the penalties hereinafter provided for 
taking fish, birds or quadrupeds in the close season. 

I want all sensible, honest sportsmen to stop citing the killing of 
game birds by severe winters as a reason why long close seasons are not 
necessary, and why automatic guns "don't matter." And I want sports- 
men to consider their duty, and not go out hunting any game species 
that has been slaughtered by a hard winter, until it has had at least five 
years in which to recover. Any other course is cruel, selfish, and short- 
sighted; and a word to the humane should be sufficient. 

The worst exhibitions ever made of the wolfish instinct to slay that 
springs eternal in some human (!) breasts are those brought about through 
the distress or errors of wild animals. By way of illustration, consider 
the slaughter of half-starved elk that took place in the edge of Idaho in 
the winter of 1909 and 1910, when about seven hundred elk that were 



DESTRUCTION BY THE ELEMENTS 91 

driven out of the Yellowstone Park at its northwestern corner by the 
deep snow, fled into Idaho in the hope of finding food. The inhabitants 
met the starving herds with repeating rifles, and as the unfortunate 
animals struggled westward through the snow and storm, they were 
slaughtered without mercy. Bulls and cows, old and young, all of the 
seven hundred, went down; and Stoney Indians could not have acted 
any worse than did those "settlers." 

On another occasion, it is recorded that the prong-horned antelope 
herd of the Mammoth Hot Springs wandered across the line into Gar- 
diner, and quickly met a savage attack of gunners with rifles. A number 
of those rare and valuable animals were killed, and others fled back into 
the Park with broken legs dangling in the air. 

In the interest of public decency, and for the protection of the repu- 
tation of American citizenship, one of two things should be done. 
The northern boundary of the Park should be extended northward be- 
yond Gardiner, or else the deathtrap should be moved elsewhere. The 
case of the town of Gardiner is referred to the legislature of Montana 
for treatment. 

Beyond question, the highest sentiments of humanity are those that 
are stirred by the misfortunes of killable game. During the past thirty 
years, I have noticed some interesting m.anifestations of the increased 
s^^mpathy for wild creatures that steadily is growing in a large section 
of the public niind. Thirt}^ years ago, the appearance of a deer or moose 
in the streets of any eastern village nearly always was in itself a signal 
for a grand chase of the unfortunate creature, and its speedy slaughter. 
Today, in the eastern states, the general feeling is quite different. The 
appearance of a deer in the Hudson River itself, or a moose in a Maine 
village is a signal, not for a wild chase and cruel slaughter, but for a 
general effort to save the animal from being hurt, or killed. I know 
this through ocular proof, at least half a dozen lost and bewildered deer 
having been carefully driven into yards, or barns, and humanely kept 
and cared for until they could be shipped to us. Several have been 
caught while swimming in the Hudson, bewildered and panic-stricken. 
The latest capture occurred in New York City itself. 

A puma that escaped (about 1902) from the Zoological Park, instead 
of being shot was captured by sensible people in the hamlet of Bronx- 
dale, alive and unhurt, and safely returned to us. 

In some portions of the east, though not all, the day of the hue and 
cry over "a wild animal in town" seems to be about over. On Long 
Island some humane persons found an injured turkey vulture, and took it 
in and cared for it, — only to be persecuted by ill-advised game wardens, 
because they had a forbidden wild bird "in their possession!" There 
are times when it is the highest (moral) duty of a game warden to follow 
the advice of Private Mulvaney to the "orficer boy," and "Shut j'cr oye 
to the rigulations, sorr!" 

Such occurrences as these are becoming more and more common. 
The desire of "the great silent majority" is to SAVE the wild creatures; 



92 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

and it is in response to that sentiment that thousands of people are to- 
day in the field against the Army of Destruction. 

It is the duty of every sportsman to assist in promoting the passage 
of a law like our New York law which empowers the State Game Com- 
mission to throw extra protection around any species that has been 
slaughtered too much by snow or by firearms, by closing the open sea- 
son as long as may be necessary. Can there be in all America even one 
thinking, reasoning being who can not see the justice and also the im- 
perative necessity of this measure ? It seems impossible. 

Give the game the benefit of every doubt ! If it becomes too thick, 
your gun can quickly thin it out ; but if it is once exterminated, it will 
be impossible to bring it back. Be wise; and take thought for the mor- 
row. Remember the heath hen. 

Slaughter of Bluebirds. — In the late winter and early spring of 
1896 the wave of bluebirds was caught on its northward migration by 
a period of unseasonably cold and fearfully tempestuous weather, in- 
volving much icy-cold rain and sleet. Now, there is no other climatic 
condition that is so hard for a wild bird or mammal to withstand as rain 
at the freezing point, and a mantle of ice or frozen snow over all supplies 
of food. 

The bluebirds perished by thousands. The loss occured practically 
all along their east-and-west line of migration, from Arkansas to the 
Atlantic Coast. In places the species seemed almost exterminated; and 
it was several years ere it recovered to a point even faintly approximat- 
ing its original population. I am quite certain that the species never 
has recovered more than 50 per cent of the number that existed previous 
to the calamity. 

Duck Cholera in the Bronx River. — In 1911, some unknown 
but new and particularly deadly element, probably introduced in sewage, 
contaminated the waters of Bronx River where it flows through New 
York City, with results very fatal in the Zoological Park. The large 
flock of mallard ducks, Canada geese, and snow geese on Lake 
Agassiz was completely wiped out. In all about 125 waterfowl died 
in rapid sucession, from causes commonly classed under the popular 
name of "duck cholera." The disease was carried to other bodies of 
water in the Park that were fed from other sources, but made no head- 
way elsewhere than on lakes fed by the polluted Bronx River. 

Fortunately the work of the Bronx River Parkway Commission soon 
will terminate the present very unsanitary condition of that stream. 

Wild Ducks in Distress. — In the winter of 1911-12, many flocks 
of wild ducks decided to winter in the North. Many persons believe 
that this was largely due to the prevention of late winter and spring 
shooting; which seems reasonable. Unfortunately the winter referred 
to proved exceptionally severe and formed vast sheets of thick ice over 
the feeding-grounds where the ducks had expected to obtain their food. 
On Cayuga, Seneca and other lakes in central New York, and on the 
island of Martha's Vineyard, the flocks of ducks suffered very severely, 



DESTRUCTION BY THE ELEMENTS 93 

and many perished of hunger and cold. But for the laws prohibiting late 
winter shooting undoubtedly all of them would have been shot and eaten, re- 
gardless of their distress. 

Game wardens and humane citizens made numerous efforts to feed 
the starving flocks, and many ducks were saved in that way. An illus- 
trated article on the distressed ducks of Keuka Lake, by C. William 
Beebe and Verdi Burtch, appeared in the Zoological Society Bulletin 
for May, 1912. Fortunately there is every reason to believe that such 
occurrences will be rare. 

Wild Swans Swept Over Niagara Falls. — During the past ten 
vears, several winter tragedies to birds have occurred on a large scale 
at Niagara Falls. Whole flocks of whistling swans of from 20 up to 70 
individuals alighting in the Niagara River above the rapids have permit- 
ted themselves to float down into the rapids, and be swept over the Falls, 
en masse. On each occasion, the great majority of the birds were 
drowned, or killed on the rocks. Of the very few that survived, few if 
any were able to rise and fly out of the gorge below the Falls to safety. 
It is my impression that about 200 swans recently have perished in 
this strange way. 



CHAPTER XI 

SLAUGHTER OF SONG-BIRDS BY ITALIANS 

In these days of wild-life slaughter, we hear much of death and de- 
struction. Before our eyes there continually arise photographs of hang- 
ing masses of waterfowl, grouse, pheasants, deer and fish, usually sup- 
ported in true heraldic fashion by the men who slew them and the im- 
plements of slaughter. The world has become somewhat hardened to 
these things, because the victims are classed as game; and in the de- 
struction of game, one game-bag more or less "Will not count in the 
news of the battle." 

The slaughter of song, insectivorous and all other birds by Italians 
and other aliens from southern Europe has become a scourge to the bird 
life of this country. The devilish work of the negroes and poor whites 
of the South will be considered in the next chapter. In Italy, linnets and 
sparrows are "game"; and so is everything else that wears feathers! 
Italy is a continuous slaughtering-ground for the migratory birds of 
Europe, and as such it is an international nuisance and a pest. The way 
passerine birds are killed and eaten in that country is a disgrace to the 
government of Italy, and a standing reproach to the throne. Even kings 
and parliaments have no right in moral or international law to permit 
year after year the wholesale slaughter of birds of passage of species 
that no civilized man has a right to kill. 

There are some tales of slaughter from which every properly-balanced 
Christian mind is bound to recoil with horror. One such tale has recently 
been given to us in the pages of the Avicultural Magazine, of London, 
for January, 1912, by Mr. Hubert D. Astley, F. Z. S., whose word no 
man will dispute. In condensing it, let us call it 

'The Italian Slaughter of the Innocents 

This story does not concern game birds of any kind. Quite the con- 
trary. That it should be published in America, a land now rapidly fill- 
ing up with Italians, is a painful necessity in order that the people of 
America may be enabled accurately to measure the fatherland traditions 
and the fixed mental attitude of Italians generally toward our song birds. 
I shall now hold a mirror up to Italian nature. If the image is either 
hideous or grotesque, the fault will not be mine. I specially commend 
the picture to the notice of American game wardens and judges on the 
bench. 

The American reader must be reminded that the Italian peninsula 
reaches out a long arm of land into the Mediterranean Sea for several 



96 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

hundred miles toward the sunny Barbary coast of North Africa. This 
great southward highway has been chosen by the birds of central Europe 
as their favorite migration route. Especially is this true of the small 
song-birds with weak wings and a minimum of power for long-sustained 
flight. Naturally, they follow the peninsula down to the Italian Land's 
End before they launch forth to dare the passage of the Mediterranean. 

Italy is the narrow end of a great continental funnel, into the wide 
northern end of which Germany, Austria, France and Switzerland an- 
nually pour their volume of migratory bird life. And what is the result ? 
For answer let us take the testimony of two reliable witnesses, and file 
it for use on the day when Tony Macchewin, gun in hand and pockets 
bulging with cartridges, goes afield in our country and opens fire on our 
birds. 

The linnet is one of the sweet singers of Europe. It is a small, deli- 
cately formed, weak-winged little bird, about the size of our phoebe- 
bird. It weighs only a trifle more than a girl's love-letter. Where it 
breeds and rears its young, in Germany for example, a true sportsman 
would no more think of shooting a linnet than he would of killing and 
eating his daughter's dearest canary. 

To the migrating bird, the approach to northern Italy, either going 
or returning, is not through a land of plenty. The sheltering forests 
have mostly been swept away, and safe shelters for small birds are very 
rare. In the open, there are owls and hawks; and the only refuge from 
either is the thick-leafed grove, into which linnets and pipits can dive at 
the approach of danger and quickly hide. 

A linnet from the North after days of dangerous travel finally 
reached Lake Como, southward bound. The country was much too 
open for safety, and its first impulse was to look about for safe shelter. 
The low bushes that sparsely covered the steep hillsides were too thin 
for refuge in times of sudden danger. 

Ah! Upon a hilltop is a little grove of trees, green and inviting. In 
the grove a bird is calling, calling, insistently. The trees are very small ; 
but they seem to stand thickly together, and their foliage should afford 
a haven from both hawk and gunner. To it joyously flits the tired lin- 
net. As it perches aloft upon a convenient whip-like wand, it notices 
for the first time a queer, square brick tower of small dimensions, rising 
in the center of a court-yard surrounded by trees. The tower is like 
an old and dingy turret that has been shorn from a castle, and set on the 
hilltop without apparent reason. It is two stories in height, with one 
window, dingy and uninviting. A door opens into its base. 

Several birds that seem very near, but are invisible, frequently 
call and chirp, as if seeking answering calls and companionship. Surely 
the grove must be a safe place for birds, or they would not be here. 

Hark! A whirring, whistling sound fills the air, like the air tone of 
a flying hawk's wings. A hawk! A hawk! 

Down plunges the scared linnet, blindly, frantically, into the space 
sheltered by the grove ! 



SLAUGHTER BY ITALIANS 97 

Horrors ! What is this ? 

Threads! Invisible, interlacing threads; tangled and full of pockets, 
treacherously spanning the open space. It is a fowler's net ! The linnet 
is entangled. It flutters frantically but helplessly, and hangs there, 
caught. Its alarm cry is frantically answered by the two strange, invis- 
ible bird voices that come from the top of the tower ! 

The grove and the tower are A ROCCOLO! A huge, permanent, 
merciless, deadly trap, for the wholesale capture of songbirds ! The tower 
is the hiding place of the fowler, and the calling birds are decoy birds 
whose eyes have been totally blinded by red-hot wires in order that they 
will call more frantically than birds with eyes would do. Tlie whistling 
wings that seemed a hawk were a sham, made by a racquet thrown 
through the air by the fowler, through a slot in his tower. He keeps by 
him many such racquets. 

The door of the tower opens, and out comes the fowler. He is low- 
browed, swarthy, ill kept, and wears rings in his ears. A soiled hand 
seizes the struggling linnet, and drags it violently from the threads that 
entangled it. A sharp-pointed twig is thrust straight through the head 
of the helpless victim at the eyes, and after one wild, fluttering agony — it 
is dead. 

The fowler sighs contentedly, re-enters his dirty and foul-smelling 
tower, tosses the feathered atom upon the pile of dead birds that lies 
upon the dirty floor in a dirty corner, — and is ready for the next one. 

Ask him, as did Mr. Astley, and he will tell you frankly that there 
are about 150 dead birds in the pile, — starlings, sparrows, linnets, 
greenfinches, chaffinches, goldfinches, hawfinches, redstarts, blackcaps, 
robins, song thrushes, blackbirds, blue and coal tits, fieldfares and red- 
wings. He will tell you also, that there are seven other roccolos within sight 
and twelve within easy walking distance. He will tell you, as he did Mr. 
Astley, that during that week he had taken about 500 birds, and that 
that number was a fair average for each of the 12 other roccolos. 

This means the destruction of about 5,000 songbirds per week in 
that neighborhood alone! Another keeper of a roccolo told Mr. Astley 
that during the previous autumn he took about 10,000 birds at his small 
and comparatively insignificant roccolo. 

And above that awful roccolo of slaughtered innocents rose a wooden 
cross, in memory of Christ, the Merciful, the Compassionate ! 

Around the interior of the entwined sapling tops that formed the 
fatal bower of death there hung a semicircle of tiny cages containing 
live decoys, — chaffinches, hawfinches, titmice and several other species. 
"The older and staider ones call repeatedly," says Mr. Astley, "and the 
chaffinches break into song. It is the only song to be heard in Italy at 
the time of the autum migration." 

And the King of Italy, the Queen of Italy, the Parliament of Italy 
and His Holiness the Pope permit these things, year in and year out. 
It is now said, however, that through the efforts of a recently organized 



98 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

bird-lovers' society in Italy, the blinding of decoy birds for roccclos is 
to be stopped. 

In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, the protection of these birds 
during their breeding season must be very effective, for otherwise the 
supply for the Italian slaughter of the Innocents would long ago have 
fallen to nothing. 

The Germans love birds, and all wild life. I wonder how they like 
the Italian roccolo. I wonder how France regards it; and whether the 
nations of Europe north of Italy will endure this situation forever. 

To the American and English reader, comment on the practices 
recorded above is quite unnecessary, except the observation that they 
betoken a callousness of feeling and a depth of cruelty and destructive- 
ness to which, sc lar as known, no savages ever yet have sunk. As an 
exhibit of the groveling pusillanimity of the human soul, the roccolo of 
northern Italy reveals minus qualities which can not be expressed either 
in words or in figures. 

And whac is the final exhibit of the gallant knight of the roccolo, 
the feudal lord of the modern castle and its retainers ? 

The answer is given by Dr. Louis B. Bishop, in an article on "Birds 
in the Markets of Southern Europe." 

In Venice, which was visited in October and November, during the 
fall migration, he found on sale in the markets, as food, thousands of 
songbirds. 

"Birds were there in profusion, from ducks to kites, in the early 
morning, hung in great bunches above the stalls, but by 9 A. M. most of 
them had been sold. Ducks and shorebirds occurred in some numbers, 
but the vast majority were small sparrows, larks and thrushes. These 
were there during my visit by the thousands, if not ten thousands. To 
the market they were brought in large sacks, strung in fours on twigs 
which had been passed through the eyes and then tied. Most of these 
small birds had been trapped, and on skinning them I often could find 
no injury except at their eyes.* One of these sacks which I examined on 
November 3, contained hundreds of birds, largely siskins, skylarks and 
bramblings. As a rule the small birds that were not sold in the early 
morning were skinned or picked, and their tiny bodies packed in regular 
order,, breasts up, in shallow tin boxes, and exposed for sale." 

"During these visits to the Venetian markets, I identified 60 species, 
and procured specimens of most. As nearly as I can remember, small 
birds cost from two to five cents apiece. For example I paid $2.15 on 
Nov. 8, for 

1 Woodcock, 1 Skylark, 

1 Jay, 1 Greenfinch, 

2 Starlings, 1 Bullfinch, 
2 Spotted Crakes, 1 Redpoll, 

1 Song Thrush, 3 Linnets, 

1 Gold-Crest, 2 Goldfinches, 

It is probable that these birds were killed by piercing the head through the eyes. 



SLAUGHTER BY ITALIANS 



99 



1 Long-Tailed Titmouse, 
1 Great Titmouse, 
1 Pipit, 
1 Redstart, 




6 Siskins, 
3 Reed Buntings, 
3 Bramblings, 
—and 5 Chaffinches. 


Dvember 10, I paid $8.25 for 




2 Coots, 

1 Water Rail, 

1 Spotted Crake, 

1 Sparrow Hawk, 

2 Woodcock, 

1 Common Redshank, 
1 Dusky Redshank, 

2 


Dunlins.' 


1 European Curlew, 

2 Kingfishers, 
2 Greenfinches, 
2 Wrens, 

1 Great Titmouse, 
1 Blue Titmouse, 
1 Redbreast, and 



Of course there were various species of upland game birds, shore- 
birds and waterfowl, — everything, in fact, that could be found and 
killed. In addition to the passerine birds listed above, Dr. Bishop 
noted the following, all in Venice alone : 



Skylark ("in great numbers"). 

Crested Lark, 

Calandra, 

Tree Sparrow, 

Hawfinch, 

Yellow-Hammer, 

Blackbird, 

Fieldfare, 

Song Thrush, 



Crossbill, 
House Sparrow, 
Stonechat, 
Coal, 
Goldcrest, 
Rock Pipit, 
White Wagtail, 
Redwing. 



"In Florence," says Dr. Bishop, "I visited the central market on 
November 26, 28, 29, 30, December 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, and found 
birds even more plentiful than in Venice." Besides a variety of 
game birds, he found quantities of the species mentioned above, seen in 
Venice, and also the following : 



Green Sandpiper, 
Dotterel, 
Magpie, 
Corn Bunting, 
Migratory Quail, 
Green Woodpecker, 
Spotted Woodpecker, 
Wood Lark, 



Gray Wagtail. 



Brown Creeper, 
Nuthatch, 

Black-Cap Warbler, 
Black-Headed Warbler, 
Fantail Warbler, 
Missel Thrush, 
Ring Ouzel, 
Rock Sparrow, and 



"Here, too [at Florence] we saw often, bunches and baskets of small 
birds, chiefly redbreasts, hawked through the streets. . . . Every 
Sunday that we went into the country we met numbers of Italians out 
shooting, and their bags seemed to consist wholly of small birds. 

"At Genoa, San Remo, Monte Carlo and Nice, between December 
13 and 29, I did not visit the central markets, if such exist, but saw fre- 
quently bunches of small birds hanging outside stores. ... A 
gentleman who spent the fall on an automobile trip through the west of 
FRANCE from Brittany to the Pyrenees, tells me he noticed these bunches 
of small birds on sale in every town he visited. 



100 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

"That killing song-birds for food," continues Dr. Bishop, "is not 
confined to the poor Italians I learned on October 27, when one of the 
most prominent and wealthy Italian ornithologists — a delightful man — 
told me he had shot 180 skylarks and pipits the day before, and that his 
family liked them far better than other game. Our prejudice against 
selling game does not exist in Europe, and this same ornithologist told 
me he often shot 200 ducks in a day at his shooting-box, sending to the 
market what he could not use himself. On November 1, 1910, he shot 
82 ducks, and on November 8, 103, chiefly widgeon and teal." 

An "ornithologist" indeed! A "sportsman" also, is he not? He 
belongs with his brother "ornithologists" of the roccolos, who net their 
"game" with the aid of blind birds! Brave men, gallant "sportsmen," 
are these men of Italy, — and western France also if the tale is true! 

If the people of Europe can stand the wholesale, systematic slaughter 
of their song and insectivorous birds, we can! If they are too mean- 
spirited to rise up, make a row about it, and stop it, then let them pay 
the price; but, by the Eternal, Antonio shall not come to this coimtry 
with the song-bird tastes of the roccolo and indulge them here ! 

The above facts have been cited, not at all for the benefit of Europe, 
but for our own good. The American People are now confronted by 
the Italian and Austrian and Hungarian laborer and saloon-keeper 
and mechanic, and all Americans should have an exact measure of the 
sentiments of southern Europe toward our wild life generally, especially 
the birds that we do not shoot at all, and therefore are easy to kill. 

When a warden or a citizen arrests an alien for killing any of our 
non-game birds, show the judge these records of how they do things in 
Italy, and ask for the extreme penalty. 

I have taken pains to publish the above facts from eye-witnesses 
in order that every game commissioner, game warden and state legis- 
lator who reads these pages may know exactly what he is "up against" 
in the alien population of our country from southern Europe. For un- 
numbered generations, the people of Italy have been taught to believe 
that it is perfectly right to shoot and devour every song-bird that flies. 
The Venetian is no respector of species; and when an Italian "ornithol- 
ogist" (!) can go out and murder 180 linnets and pipits in one day for 
the pot, it is time for Americans to think hard. 

We sincerely hope that it will not require blows and kicks and fines to 
remove from Antonio's head the idea that America is not Italy, and that 
the slaughter of song birds "don't go" in this country. I strongly rec- 
ommend to every state the enactment of a law that will do these things : 

1. — Prohibit the owning, carrying or use of firearms by aliens, and 

2. — Prohibit the use of firearms in hunting by any naturalized alien 
from southern Europe until after a 10-years' residence in America. 

From reports that have come to me at first hand regarding Italians in 
the East, Hungarians in Pennsylvania and Austrians in Minnesota, it 
seems absolutely certain that all members of the lower classes of southern 
Europe are a dangerous menace to our wild life. 



SLAUGHTER BY ITALIANS 101 

On account of the now-accursed land-of -liberty idea, every foreigner 
who sails past the statue on Bcdloe's Island and lands on our liberty- 
ridden shore, is firmly convinced that now, at last, he can do as he pleases! 
And as one of his first ways in which to show his newly-acquired personal 
liberty and independence in the Land of Easy Marks, he buys a gun 
and goes out to shoot "free game!" 

If we, as a people, are so indolent and so somnolent that Antonio 
gets away with all our wild birds, then do we deserve to be robbed. 

Italians are pouring into America in a steady stream. They are 
strong, prolific, persistent and of tireless energy. New York City now 
contains 340,000 of them. They work while the native Americans sleep. 
Wherever they settle, their tendency is to root out the native American 
and take his place and his income. Toward wild life the Italian laborer 
is a human mongoose. Give him power to act, and he will quickly ex- 
terminate every wild thing that wears feathers or hair. To our song- 
birds he is literally a "pestilence that walkcth at noonday". 

As we have shown, the Italian is a born pot-hunter, and he has 
grown up in the fixed belief that killing song-birds for food is right ! To 
him all is game that goes into the bag. The moment he sets foot in the 
open, he provides himself with a shot-gun, and he looks about for things 
to kill. It is "a free country;" therefore, he may kill anything he can 
find, cook it and eat it. If anybody attempts to check him, — sapristi! 
beware his gun! He cheerfully invades your fields, and even your lawn; 
and he shoots robins, bluebirds, thrushes, catbirds, grosbeaks, tanagers, 
orioles, woodpeckers, quail, snipe, ducks, crows, and herons. 

Down in Virginia, near Charlottesville, an Italian who was working 
on a new railroad once killed a turkey buzzard; and he selfishly cooked 
it and ate it, all alone. A pot-hunting compatriot of his heard of it, 
and reproached him for having dined on game in camera. In the quarrel 
that ensued, one of the "sportsmen" stabbed the other to death. 

When the New York Zoological Society began work on its Park in 
1899, the northern half of the Borough of the Bronx was a regular daily 
hunting-ground for the slaughter of song-birds, and all other birds that 
could be found. Every Sunday it was "bangetty!" "bang!" from Pel- 
ham Bay to Van Cortlandt. The police force paid not the slightest 
attention to these open, flagrant, shameless violations of the city or- 
dinances and the state bird laws. In those days I never but once heard 
of a policeman on his own initiative arresting a birdshooter, even on Sun- 
day; but whenever meddlesome special wardens from the Zoological 
Park have pointedly called upon the local police force for help, it has al- 
ways been given with cheerful alacrity. In the fall of 1912 an appeal 
to the Police Commissioner resulted in a general order to stop all hunting 
and shooting in the Borough of the Bronx, and a reform is now on. 

The war on the bird-killers in New York City began in 1900. It 
seemed that if the Zoological Society did not take up the matter, the 
slaughter would continue indefinitely. The white inan's burden was 
taken up; and the story of the war is rather illuminating. Mr. G. O. 



102 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Shields, President of the League of American Sportsmen, quickly became 
interested in the matter, and entered actively into the campaign. For 
months unnumbered, he spent every Sunday patroling the woods and 
thickets of northern New York and Westchester county, usually accom- 
panied by John J. Rose and Rudolph Bell of the Zoological Park force, 
for whom appointments as deputy game wardens had been secured from 
the State. 

The adventures of that redoubtable trio of man-hunters would make 
an interesting chapter. They were shot at by poachers, but more fre- 
quently they shot at the other fellows. Just why it was that no one was 
killed, no one seems to know. Many Italians and several Americans 
were arrested while hunting, haled to court, prosecuted and fined. Fi- 
nally, a reign of terror set in; and that was the beginning of the end. It 
became known that those three men could not be stopped by threats, and 
that they always got their man — unless he got into a human rabbit- 
warren of the Italian boarding-house species. That was the only escape 
that was possible. 

The largest haul of dead birds was 43 robins, orioles, thrushes and 
woodpeckers, captured along with the five Italians who committed the 
indiscretion of sitting down in the woods to divide their dead birds. We 
saved all the birds in alcohol, and showed them in court. The judge 
fined two of the Italians $50 each, and the other three were sent to the 
penitentiary for two months each. 

Even yet, however, at long intervals an occasional son of sunny 
Italy tries his luck at Sunday bird shooting; but if anyone yells at him 
to "Halt!" he throws away his gun and stampedes through the brash 
like a frightened deer. The birds of upper New York are now fairly 
secure; but it has taken ten years of fighting to bring it about. 

Throughout New York State, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecti- 
cut, Massachusetts, and even 'Minnesota, wherever there are large settle- 
ments of Italians and Hungarians, the reports are the same. They swarm 
through the country every Sunday, and shoot every wild thing they see. 
Wherever there are large construction works, — railroads, canals or aque- 
ducts, — look for bird slaughter, and you are sure to find it. The excep- 
tion to this rule, so far as I know, is along the line of the new Catskill 
aqueduct, coming to New York City. The contractors have elected 
not to permit bird slaughter, and the rule has been made that any man 
who goes out hunting will instantly be discharged. That is the best 
rule that ever was made for the protection of birds and game against 
gang- working aliens. 

Let every state and province in America look out sharply for the 
bird-killing foreigner; for sooner or later, he will surely attack your 
wild life. The Italians are spreading, spreading, spreading. If you are 
without them to-day, to-morrow they will be around you. Meet them 
at the threshold with drastic laws, throughly enforced; for no half way 
measures will answer. 

Pennsylvania has had the worst experience of alien slaughterers of 



SLAUGHTER BY ITALIANS 10^ 

any state, — thus far. Six of her game wardens have been killed, and eight 
or ten have been wounded, by shooting! Finally her legislature arose 
in wrath, and passed a law prohibiting the ownership or possession 
of guns of any kind by aliens. The law gives the right of domiciliary 
search, and it surely is enforced. Of course the foreign population 
"kicked" against the law, but the People's steam roller went over them 
just the same. In New York, we require from an alien a license costing 
$20, and it has saved a million (perhaps) of our birds ; but the Pennsyl- 
vania law is the best. It may be taken as a model for every state and 
province in America. Its text is as follows: 

Section 1. Be it enacted, &c., That from and after the passage of this act, it shall 
be unlawful for any unnaturalized foreign-born resident to hunt for or capture or kill, 
in this Commonwealth, any wild bird or animal, either game or otherwise, of any 
description, excepting in defense of person or property; and to that end it shall be 
unlawful for any unnaturalized foreign-born resident, within this Commonwealth, to 
either own or be possessed of a shotgun or rifle of any make. Each and every person 
violating any provision of this section shall, upon conviction thereof, be sentenced to 
pay a penalty of twenty-five dollars for each offense, or undergo imprisonment in the 
common jail of the county for the period of one day for each dollar of penalty imposed. 
Provided, That in addition to the before-named penalty, all guns of the before-men- 
tioned kinds found in possession or under control of an unnaturalized foreign-born 
resident shall, upon conviction of such person, or upon his signing a declaration of 
guilt as prescribed by this act, be declared forfeited to the Commonwealth of Penn- 
sylvania, and shall be sold by the Board of Game Commissioners as hereinafter directed. 

Section 2. For the purpose of this act, any unnaturalized foreign-born person who 
shall reside or live within the boundaries of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 
ten consecutive days shall be considered a resident and shall be liable to the penalties 
imposed for violation of the provisions of this act. 

Seciion 3. That the possession of a shotgun or rifle at any place outside of a building, 
within this Commonwealth, by an unnaturalized foreign-born resident, shall be con- 
clusive proof of a violation of the provisions of section one of this act, and shall render 
any person convicted thereof liable to the penalty as fixed by said section. 

Section 4. That the presence of a shotgun or rifle in a room or house, or building or 
tent, or camp of any description, within this Commonwealth, occupied by or controlled 
by an unnaturalized foreign-born resident shall be prima facie evidence that such gun is 
owned or controlled by the person occupying or controlling the property in which such 
gun is found, and shall render such person liable to the penalty imposed by section one 
of this act. 

Other sections provide for the full enforcement of this law. 

It is now high time, and an imperative public necessity, that every 
state should act in this matter, before its bird life is suddenly attacked, 
and serious inroads made upon it. Do it NOW! The enem}^ is headed 
your way. Don't wait for him to strike the first blow ! 

Duty of the Italian Press and Clergy. — Now what is the best remedy 
for the troubles that will arise for Italians in America because of wrong 
principles established in Italy? It is not in the law, the police, the 
court and the punishment. It is in educating the Italian into a knowl- 
edge of the duties of the good citizen ! The Italian press and clergy can 
do this ; and no one else can do it so easily, so quickly and so well ! 

Those two powerful forces should enter seriously upon this task. In 
every other respect, the naturalized Italian tries to become a good citi- 



104 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 



zen, and adjust himself to the laws and the customs of his new country. 
Why should he not do this in regard to bird life ? It is not too much 
to ask, nor is it too much to exact. Does the Italian workman, or store- 
keeper who makes his living by honest toil enjoy breaking our bird laws, 
enjoy irritating and injuring those with whom he has come to live? 
Does he enjoy being watched, and searched, and chased, and arrested, 

all for a few small birds that he does not need for food ? He earns good 

wages; he has plenty of good food; and he must be educated into pro- 
tecting our birds instead of destroying them. The Italian newspapers 
and clergy have a serious duty to perform in this matter, and we hope 
they will diligently discharge it . 




DEAD SONG-BIRDS 

These jars contain the dead bodies of 43 valu- 
able insectivorous birds that were taken from two 
Italians in October, 1905, in the suburbs of New 
York City, by game wardens of the New York 
Zoological Society. 



CHAPTER XII 

DESTRUCTION OF SONG BIRDS BY SOUTHERN NEGROES 
AND POOR WHITES 

Before going farther,' there is one point that I wish to make quite 
clear. 

Whenever the people of a particular race make a specialty of some 
particular type of wrong-doing, anyone who pointedly rebukes the 
faulty members of that race is immediately accused of "race prejudice." 
On account of the facts I am now setting forth about the doings of Ital- 
ian and negro bird-killers, I expect to be accused along that line. If I 
am, I shall strenuously deny the charge. Thr facts speak for themselves. 
Zoologically, however, I am strongly prejudiced against the people of 
any race, creed, club, state or nation who make a specialty of any par- 
ticularly offensive type of bird or wild animal slaughter; and I do not 
care who knows it. 

The time was, and I remember it very well, when even the poorest 
gunner scorned to kill birds that were not considered "game." In days 
lang syne, many a zoological collector has been jeered because the 
specimens he had killed for preservation were not "game." 

But times have changed. In the wearing of furs, we have bumped 
down steps both high and steep. In 1880 American women wore seal- 
skin, marten, otter, beaver and mink. To-day nothing that wears hair 
is too humble to be skinned and worn. To-day "they are wearing" 
skins of muskrats, foxes, rabbits, skunks, domestic cats, squirrels, and 
even rats. And see how the taste for game, — of some sections of our 
population, — also has gone down. 

In the North, the Italians are fighting for the privilege of eating every- 
thing that wears feathers ; but we allow no birds to be shot for food save 
game birds and cranes. In the South, the negroes and poor whites are 
killing song-birds, woodpeckers and doves for food; and in several states 
some of it is done under the authority of the laws. Look at these awful 
lists : 

IN THESE STATES, ROBINS ARE LEGALLY SHOT AND EATEN: 
Louisiana North Carolina Tennessee Texas 

Mississippi South Carolina Maryland Florida 

IN THESE STATES, BLACKBIRDS ARE LEGALLY vSHOT AND EATEN: 

Louisiana Pennsylvania Tennessee 

District of Columbia South Carolina 



106 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

CRANES ARE SHOT AND EATEN IN THESE STATES: 
Colorado North Dakota Nevada Oklahoma Nebraska 

In Mississippi, the cedar bird is legally shot and eaten! 
In North Carolina, the meadow lark is shot and eaten. 

IN THE FOLLOWING STATES, DOVES ARE CONSIDERED "GAME," AND 
ARE SHOT IN AN "OPEN SEASON:" 

Alabama Georgia Minnesota Ohio 

Arkansas Idaho Mississippi Oregon 

California IlHnois Missouri Pennsylvania 

Connecticut Kentucky Nebraska South Carolina 

Delaware Louisiana New Mexico Tennessee 

Dist. of Columiba Maryland North Carolina Texas 

Utah Virginia 

The killing of doves represents a great and widespread decline in the 
ethics of sportsmanship. In the twenty-six States named, a great many 
men who call themselves sportsmen indulge in the cheap and ignoble 
pastime of potting weak and confiding doves. It is on a par with the 
"sport" of hunting English sparrows in a city street. Of course this 
is, to a certain extent, a matter of taste; but there is at least one club 
of sportsmen into which no dove-killer can enter, provided his standard 
of ethics is known in advance. 

With the killing of robins, larks, blackbirds and cedar birds for food, 
the case is quite different. No white man calling himself a sportsman 
ever indulges in such low pastimes as the killing of such birds for food. 
That burden of disgrace rests upon the negroes and poor whites of the 
South; but at the same time, it is a shame that respectable white men 
sitting in state legislatures should deliberately enact laws permitting 
such disgraceful practices, or permit such disgraceful and ungentlemanly 
laws to remain in force ! 

Here is a case by way of illustration, copied very recently from the 
Atlanta Journal: 

Editor Journal: — I located a robin roost up the Trinity River, six miles from 
Dallas, and prevailed on six Dallas sportsmen to go with me on a torch-light bird hunt. 
This style of hunting was, of course, new to the Texans, but they finally consented to 
go, and I had the pleasure of showing them how it was done. 

Equipped with torch lights and shot guns, we proceeded. After reaching the 
hunting grounds the sport began in reality, and continued for two hours and ten 
minutes, with a total slaughter of 10,157 birds, an average of 1,451 birds killed by each 
man. 

But the Texans give me credit for killing at least 2,000 of the entire number. 
I was called 'the king of bird hunters' by the sportsmen of Dallas, Texas, and have 
been invited to command-in-chief the next party of hunters which go from Dallas to 
the Indian Territory in search of large game.— F. L. CROW, Dallas, Texas, former 
Atlantan. 

Dallas, Texas, papers and Oklahoma papers, please copy ! 

As a further illustration of the spirit manifested in the South toward 



BIRD SLAUGHTER IN THE SOUTH 



107 




THE ROBIN OF THE NORTH 

Our best-beloved Song Bird, now being legally shot as "gam: 
the South. In the North there is now only one robin for 
every ten formerly there. 



robins, I quote the follow- 
ing story from Dr. P. P. 
Claxton, of the University 
of Tennessee, as related in 
Audubon Educational 
Leaflet No. 46, by Mr. T. 
Gilbert Pearson: — 

"The roost to which I 
refer," says Professor Clax- 
ton, "was situated in what 
is locally known as a 'cedar 
glade,' near Forestville, 
Bedford Co., Tennessee. 
This is a great cedar coun- 
try, and robins used to 
come in immense numbers 
during the winter months, 
to feed on the berries. 

"The spot which the 
roost occupied was not un- 
like numerous others that might have been selected. The trees grew to a 
height of from five to thirty feet, and for a mi'e square were literally 
loaded at night with robins. Hunting them while they roosted was a 
favorite sport. A man 
would climb a cedar tree 
with a torch, while his com- 
panions with poles and 
clubs would disturb the 
sleeping birds on the ad- 
jacent trees. Blinded by 
the light, the suddenly 
awakened birds flew to the 
torch-bearer; who, as he 
seized each bird would 
quickly pull off its head, and 
drop it into a sack sus- 
pended from his shoulders. 
"The capture of three 
of four hundred birds was 
an ordinary night's work. 
Men and boys would come 
in wagons from all the ad- 
joining counties and camp 
near the roost for the pur- 
pose of killing robins. 
Many times, 100 or more 
hunters with torches and 
clubs would be at work in 




THE MOCKIXC.-niRD OF THE SOUTH 



This sweet singer of the South is NOT being shot in the North 

for food ! No northern lawmaker ever will permit such 

barbarity. 



108 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 





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NORTHERN ROBINS READY FOR SOUTHERN SLAUGHTER 

19.5 Birds at Avery Island, La. in January 1912, Photographed During the Annual 
Slaughter, by E. A. Mcllhenny 

a single night. For three years this tremendous slaughter continued in 
winter, — and then the survivors deserted the roost." ' - '■- ■ 

No: these people were not Apache Indians, led by a Geronimo who 
knew no mercy, no coinpassion. We imagine that they were mostly 
poor white trash, of Tennessee. One small hamlet sent to market annu- 
ally enough dead robins to return $500 at five cents per dozen; which means 
120,000 birds! ) 

Last winter Mr. Edward A. Mcllhenny of Avery Island, La. (south 
of New Iberia) informed me that every winter, during the two weeks that 
the holly berries are ripe thousands of robins come to his vicinity to 
feed upon them. "Then every negro man and boy who can raise a gun is 
after them. About 10,000 robins are slaughtered each day while they 
remain. Their dead bodies are sold in New Iberia at 10 cents each." The 
accompanying illustrations taken by Mr. Mcllhenny shows 195 robins 
on one tree, and explains how such great slaughter is possible. 

An officer of the Louisiana Audubon Society states that a conserv- 
ative estimate of the number of robins annually killed in Louisiana 



BIRD-SLAUGHTER IN THE SOUTH 109 

for food purposes when they are usually plentiful, is a quarter of a 
million ! 

The food of the robin is as follows : 

Insects, 40 per cent; wild fruit, 43 per cent; cultivated fruit, 8 per 
cent, miscellaneous vegetable food, 5 per cent. 

Special Work of the Southern Negroes. — In 1912 a female colored 
servant who recently had arrived from country life in Virginia chanced 
to remark to me at our country home in the middle of August : "I wish I 
could find some birds' nests!" 

"What for?" I asked, rather puzzled. 

"Why, to get the aigs and eat 'em!" she responded with a bright 
smile and flashing teeth. 

' ' Do you eat the eggs of wild birds ' ' ' 

"Yes indeed! It's fine to get a pattridge nest! From them we 
nearly always git a whole dozen of aigs at once, — back where I live, in 
Virginia." 

"Do the colored people of Virginia make a practice of hunting for 
the eggs of wild birds, and eating them?" 

"Yes, indeed we do. In the spring and summer, when the birds are 
around, we used to get out every Sunday, and hunt all day. Some days 
we'd come back with a whole bucket full of aigs; and then we'd set up 
half the night, cookin' and eatin' 'em. They was awful good!" 

Her face fairly beamed at the memory of it. 

A few days later, this story of the doings of Virginia negroes was 
fully corroborated by a colored man who came from another section 
of that state. Three months later, after special inquiries made at my 
request, a gentleman of Richmond obtained further corroboration, from 
negroes. He was himself much surprised by the state of fact that was 
revealed to him. 

In the North, the economic value of our song birds and other de- 
stroyers of insects and weed seeds is understood by a majority of the 
people, and as far as possible those birds are protected from all human 
enemies. But in the South, a new division of the Army of Destruction 
has risen into deadly prominence. 

In Recreation Magazine for May, 1909, Mr. Charles Askins published 
a most startling and illuminating article, entitled "The South's Problem 
in Game Protection." It brought together in concrete form and with 
eye-witness reliability the impressions that for months previous had 
been gaining ground in the North. In order to give the testimony of a 
man who has seen what he describes, I shall now give numerous quo- 
tations from Mr. Askins' article, which certainly bears the stamp of 
truthfulness, without any "race prejudice" whatever. It is a calm, 
judicial, unemotional analysis of a very bad situation: and I particularly 
commend it alike to the farmers of the North and all the true sportsmen 
of the South. 



110 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE ^ 

In his opening paragraphs Mr. Askins describes game and hunting 
conditions in the South as they were down to twenty years ago, wheri the 
negroes were too poor to own guns, and shooting was not for them. 

SPECIAL WORK OF THE SOUTHERN NEGROES. 

It is all different now, says Mr. Askins, and the old days will only come back with 
the water that has gone down the stream. The master is with his fathers or he is 
whiling away his last days on the courthouse steps of the town. Perhaps a chimney or 
two remain of what was once the "big house " on the hill ; possibly it is still standing, but 
as forlorn and lifeless as a dead tree. The muscadine grapes still grow in the swale 
and the persimmons in the pasture field, but neither 'possum nor 'coon is left to eat 
them. The last deer vanished years ago, the rabbits died in their baby coats and the 
quail were killed in June. Old "Uncle Ike" has gone across the "Great River" with 
his master, and his grandson glances at you askance, nods sullenly, whistles to his 
halfbreed bird dog, shoulders his three dollar gun and leaves you. He is typical of the 
change and has caused it, this grandson of dear old Uncle Ike. 

In the same way the white man is telling the black to abide upon the plantation 
raising cotton and corn, and further than this nothing will be required of him. He can 
cheat a white man or a black, steal in a petty way anything that comes handy, live in 
marriage or out of it to please himself, kill another negro if he likes, and lastly shoot 
every wild thing that can be eaten, if only he raises the cotton and the corn. But the 
white sportsmen of the South have never willingly granted the shooting privilege in 
its entirety, and hence this story. They have told him to trap the rabbits, pot the robins, 
slaughter the doves, kill the song birds, but to spare the white sportsman's game, the 
aristocratic little bobwhite quail. 

In the beginning not so much damage to southern game interests could be accom- 
pUshed by our colored man and brother, however decided his inclinations. He had no 
money, no ammunition and no gun. His weapons were an ax, a club, a trap, and 
a hound dog; possibly he might own an old war musket bored out for shot. Such an 
outfit was not adapted to quail shooting and especially to wing shooting, with which 
knowledge Dixie's sportsmen were content. Let the negro ramble about with his hound 
dog and his war musket; he couldn't possibly kill the quail. And so Uncle Ike's grand- 
son loafed and pottered about in the fields with his ax and his hound dogs, not doing 
so much harm to the quail but acquiring knowledge of the habits of the birds and skill 
as a still-hunting pot-hunter that would serve him well later on. The negro belongs 
to a primitive race of people and all such races have keener eyes than white men \yhose 
fathers have pored over lines of black and white. He learned to see the rabbit in its 
form, the squirrels in the leafy trees, and the quails huddled in the grass. The least 
shade of gray in the shadow of the creek bank he distinguished at once as a rabbit, a 
glinting flash from a tree top he knew instantly as being caused by the slight movement 
of a hidden squirrel, and the quiver of a single stem of sedge grass told him of a bevy 
of birds hiding in the depths. The pot-hunting negro has all the skill of the Indian, 
has more industry in his loafing, and kills without pity and without restraint. This 
grandson of Uncle Ike was growing sulky, too, with the knowledge that the white man 
was bribing him with half a loaf to raise cotton and corn wJien he might as well exact 
it all. And this he shortly did, as we shall see. 

The time came when cotton went up to sixteen cents a pound and single breech- 
loading guns went down to five dollars apiece. The negro had money now, and the 
merchants — these men who had said let the nigger alone so long as he raises cotton 
and corn — sold him the guns, a gun for every black idler, man and boy, in all the South. 
Then shortly a wail went up from the sportsmen, "The niggers are killing our quail." 
They not only were killing them, but most of the birds were already dead. On the 
grounds of the Southern Field Club where sixty bevies were raised by the dogs in one 
day, within two years but three bevies could be found in a day by the hardest kind of 
hunting; and this story was repeated all over the South. Now the negro began to 
raise bird dogs in place of hounds, and he carried his new gun to church if services 
happened to be held on a week day. Finally the negro had grown up and had com- 



112 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

passed his ambition: he could shoot partridges flying just the same as a white man, 
was a white man except for a trifling difference in color; and he could kill more birds, 
too, three times as many. It was merely a change from the old order to the new in 
which a dark-skinned "sportsman" had taken the place in plantation life of the dear 
old "Colonel" of loved memory. The negro had exacted his price for raising cotton 
and corn. 

Our colored sportsman is gregarious at all times, but especially so in the matter of 
recreation. He may slouch about alone and pot a bevy or two of quail when in actual 
need of something to eat, or when he has a sale for the birds, but when it comes to 
shooting for fun he wants to be with the "gang." I have seen the darkies at Christmas 
time collect fifty in a drove with every man his dog, and spread out over the fields. 
Such a glorious time as he has then ! A single cottontail will draw a half-dozen shots 
and perhaps a couple of young bucks will pour loads into a bunny after he is dead out of 
pure deviltry and high spirits. I once witnessed the accidental killing of a young negro 
on this kind of a foray. His companions loaded him into a wagon, stuck a cigar in 
his mouth, and tried to pour whiskey down him every time they took a drink them- 
selves as they rode back to town. This army of black hunters and their dogs cross 
field after field, combing the country with fine teeth that leave neither wild animal 
nor bird life behind. 

There comes a time toward the spring of the year after the quail season is over 
when the average rural darky is "between hay and grass." The merchants on whom 
he has depended for suppHes make it a practice to refuse credit between January first 
and crop time. The black has spent his cotton money, his sweet potato pile has 
vanished, the sorghum barrel is empty, he has eaten the last of his winter's pork, and 
all that remains is a bit of meal and the meat his gun can secure. He is hunting in 
grim earnest now, using all the cunning and skill acquired by years of practice. He 
eats woodpeckers, jaybirds, hawks and skunks, drawing the line only at crows and 
buzzards. At this season of the year I have carried chicken hawks up to the cabins 
for the sake of watching the delight of the piccaninnies who with glowing eyes would 
declare, "Them's mos' as good as chicken." What happens to the robins, doves, larks, 
red birds, mocking birds and all songsters in this hungry season needs hardly to be 
stated. 

It is also a time between hay and grass for the rabbits and the quail. The corn 
fields are bare and the weed seeds are exhausted. A spring cold spell pinches, they 
lose their vitality, become thin and quite lack their ordinary wariness. Then the 
figure-four trap springs up in the hedgerow and the sedge while the work of decimation 
goes more rapidly along. The rabbits can no longer escape the half-starved dogs, the 
thinning cover fails to hide the quail and the song birds betray themselves by singing 
of the coming spring. 

With the growing scarcity of the game now comes the season of sedge and field 
burning. This is done ostensibly to prepare the land for spring plowing, but really to 
destroy the last refuge of the quail and rabbits so that they can be bagged witli cer- 
tainty. All the negroes of a neighborhood collect for one of these burnings, all their 
dogs, and of course all the boys from six years old up. They surround the field and 
set it on fire in many places, leaving small openings for the game to dash out among 
the motley assembly. I have seen quail fly out of the burning grass with flaming 
particles still attached to them. They alight on the burnt ground too bewildered to 
fly again and the boys and dogs pick them up. Crazed rabbits try the gauntlet amidst 
the barking curs, shouting negroes and popping guns, but death is sure and quick. The 
few quail that may escape have no refuge from the hawks and nothing to eat, so every 
battue of this kind marks the absolute end of the birds in one vicinity; and the next 
day the darkies repeat the performance elsewhere. 

At this season of the year, the first of May, the blacks are putting in some of their 
one hundred working days while the single breech-loader rusts in the chimney corner. 
Surely the few birds that have escaped the foray of the "gang," lived through the 
hungry days, and survived their burned homes can now call "Bob White" and mate 
in peace. But school is out and the summer sun is putting new life into the bare feet 



BIRD-SLAUGHTER IN THE SOUTH 113 

of the half -grown boys, and the halfbreed bird dogs are busier than they were even in 
winter. The young rabbits are killed before they get out of the nest, and the quail 
eggs must be hidden rarely well that escape both the eyes of the boys and the noses of 
the dogs. After all it is not surprising that but three bevies remained of the sixty. 
Doubtless they would not, except that nature is very kind to her own in the sunny South. 

Not every white man in the South is a sportsman or even a shooter; many are 
purely business men who have said let the "nigger" do as he likes so long as he raises 
cotton and buys our goods. But Dixie has her full share of true men of the out-of-doors 
and they have sworn in downright Southern fashion that this thing has got to end. 
Nevertheless their problem is deep and puzzling. In Alabama they made an effort 
and a beginning. They asked for a law requiring every man to obtain written permission 
before entering the lands of another to hunt and shoot ; they asked for a resident license 
law taxing every gun not less than five dollars a year; for a shortened season, a bag 
limit, and a complete system of State wardens. Unfortunately, a lot of white farmers 
were in the same range as the blacks, and being hit, too, they raised a great out- 
cry. The result was that the Alabama sportsmen got everything they asked for ex- 
cept the foundation of the structure they were trying to build, the high resident license 
or gun tax which alone could have shut out three dollar guns and saved the remnant 
of the game. Under the new law the sale of game was forl:)idden, neither could it be 
shipped out of the State alive or dead ; the ever popular non-resident license was pro- 
vided for; the season was shortened and the bag limited ; the office of State game warden 
was created with deputies to be paid from fines; hunting upon the lands of another 
without written permission became a misdemeanor; and then the whole thing was 
nullified by reducing the resident license to nothing where a man shot upon his own 
land, one dollar in his own county, and two dollars outside of it. In its practical 
workings the new law amounts to this: A few northern gunners have paid the non- 
resident license fee, and enough resident licenses have been taken out by the city 
sportsmen to make up the handsome salary of the State warden. The negro still hunts 
upon his own land or upon the land of the man who wants corn and cotton raised, "with 
perfect indifference to the whole thing. Who was to enforce the law against him? 
Not the one disgusted deputy with three big counties to patrol who depended for his salary 
upon the fines collected from the negroes. It would take one man to every three miles 
square to protect the game in the South. 

The one effective way of dealing with the situation in Alabama was to have legis- 
lated three dollar guns out of existence with a five dollar tax, adding to this nearly a 
like amount on dogs. Hardly a sportsman in the South will disagree with this con- 
clusion. But sportsmen never had a majority vote either in the South or 'n the North, 
and the vSouth's grave problem is yet unsolved. 

I do not favor depriving the black man of his natural human right to hunt and 
shoot. If he is the owner of land, or if he leases or rents it, or if he does not, he should 
have exactly the same privilege of hunting that the white man has. That is not the 
question now, however, but how to restrict him to legal shooting, to make him amen- 
able to the law that governs the white man, to deprive him of the absolute license he 
now enjoys to kill throughout the year without mercy, without discrimination, without 
restraint. If only for selfish reasons, we of the North should reach to southern sports- 
men a helping hand, for by and by the last of our migratory song birds will go down 
into Dixie and never return. 

Mr. Askins has fairly stated a profoundly disturbing case. The 
remedy must contain at least three ingredients. The sportsmen of the 
South must stop the unjustifiable slaughter of their non-migratory game 
birds. As a matter of comity between states, the gentlemen of the South 
must pass laws to stop the killing of northern song-birds and all crop- 
protecting birds, for food. Finally, all men, North and South, East and 
West, must unite in the work that is necessary to secure the immediate 
enactment by Congress of a law for the federal protection of all migra- 
tory birds. 



CHAPTER XIII 
EXTERMINATION OF BIRDS FOR WOMEN'S HATS* 

It is high time for the whole civiHzed world to know that many of 
the most beautiful and remarkable birds of the world are now being 
exterminated to furnish millinery ornaments for women's wear. The 
mass of new information that we have recently secured on this trafiic 
from the headquarters of the feather trade is appalling. Previously, I 
had not dreamed that conditions are half as bad as they are. 

It is entirely fitting that on this subject New York should send a 
message to London. New York is almost a Spotless Town in plume-free 
millinery, and London and Paris are the worst places in the world. We 
have cleaned house. With but extremely slight exceptions, the blood of 
the slaughtered innocents is no lor.^er upon our skirts, and on the subject 
of plumage millinery we have a right to be just as Pharisaical as we choose. 

Here in New York (and also in New Jersey) no man may sell, own 
for sale or offer for sale the plumage of any wild American bird other 
than a game bird. More than that, the plumage of no foreign bird be- 
longing to any bird family represented in the fauna of North America 
can be sold here! There are only a few kinds of improper "millinery" 
feathers that it is possible to sell here under the law. Thanks to the 
long and arduous campaign of the National Association of Audubon 
Societies, founded and for ten years directed by gallant William Dutcher, 
you now see on the streets of New York very, very little wild-bird plum- 
age save tha't from game birds. 

It is true that a few servant girls are now wearing the cast-off aigrettes 
of their mistresses; but they are only as one in a thousand. At Atlantic 
City there is said to be a fine display of servant-girl and ladies-maid 
aigrettes. In New York and New Jersey, in Pennsylvania for every- 
thing save the sale of heron and egret plumes (a privilege obtained by a 
bunko game), in Massachusetts, and in many other of our States, the 
wild-birds'-plumage millinery business is dead. Two years ago, when the 
New York legislature refused to repeal the Dutcher law, the Millinery 
Association asserted, and brought a cloud of witnesses to Albany to 
prove, that the enforcement of the law would throw thousands of oper- 
atives out of employment. 

The law is in effect; and the aigrette business is dead in this state. 
Have any operatives starved, or been thrown out of employment? We 

*In the preparation of this chapter and its illustrations, I have had much valuable 
assistance from Mr. C. Willjam Beebe, who recently has probed the London feather 
trade almost to the bottom. 





^' ^ vt*^.;-^ 



4 

-■i 



>.ifc 



■ . fc 






. n ^ , Common Tern 

^Sa^rfw Pigeon Cock of the Rock 

Superb Calliste 



116 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 





i /'t^.'tA ■tii.^Wf'- i V*i 


%mm':-0liii^ 









1600 HUMMINGBIRD SKINS AT 2 CENTS EACH! 

Part of i\ Lot Purchased by the Zoological Society at the Regular Quarterly 

London Millinery Feather Sale, August, 1912. 



have heard of none. They are now at work making very pretty hat orna- 
ments of silk and ribbons, and gauze and lace; and " They are wearing 
them." 

But even while these words are being written, there is one large fly 
in the ointment. The store-window of E. &. S. Meyers, 688 Broadway, 
New York, contains about six hundred plumes and skins of birds of 
paradise, for sale for millinery purposes. No wonder the great bird of 
paradise is now almost extinct ! Their sale here is possible because the 
Dutcher law protects from the feather dealers only the birds that belong 
to avian families represented in the United States. With fiendish cun- 
ning and enterprise, the shameless feather dealers are ferreting out the 
birds whose skins and plumes may legally be imported into this country 



EXTERMINATION FOR WOMEN'S HATS 117 

and sold ; but we will meet that with a law that will protect all foreign 
birds, so far as we are concerned. Now it is time for the universal en- 
actment of a law which will prohibit the sale and use as ornaments of 
the plumage, feathers or skins of any wild bird that is not a legitimate 
game bird. 

London is now the head of the giant octopus of the "feather trade" 
that has reached out its deadly tentacles into the most remote wilder- 
nesses of the earth, and steadily is drawing in the "skins " and "plumes " 
and " quills " of the most beautiful and most interesting unprotected birds 
of the world. The extent of this cold-blooded industry, supported by 
vain and hard-hearted women, will presently be shown in detail. Paris 
is the great manufacturing center of feather trimming and ornaments, 
and the French people obstinately refuse to protect the birds 
from extermination, because their slaughter affords employment to 
a certain numbers of French factory operatives. 

All over the world where they have real estate possessions, the 
men of England know how to protect game from extermination. 
The English are good at protecting game — when they decide to set 
about it. 

Why should London be the Mecca of the feather-killers of the world ? 

It is easily explained : 

(1) London has the greatest feather market in the world; (2) the 
feather industry "wants the money"; and (3) the London feather in- 
dustry is willing to spend money in fighting to retain its strangle-hold 
on the unprotected birds of the world. 

Let us run through a small portion of the mass of fresh evidence before 
us. It will be easier for the friends of birds to read these details here 
than to procure them at first hand, as we have done. 

The first thing that strikes one is the fact that the feather-hunters 
are scattered all over the world where bird life is plentiful and there are no 
laws to hinder their work. -I commend to every friend of birds this list 
of the species whose plumage is to-day being bought and sold in large 
quantities every year in London. To the birds of the world this list is 
of deadly import, for it spells extermination. 

The reader will notice that it is the way of the millinery octopus to 
reach out to the uttermost ends of the earth, and take everything that it 
can use. From the trackless jungles of New Guinea, round the world 
both ways to the snow-capped peaks of the Andes, no unprotected bird 
is safe. The humming-birds of Brazil, the egrets of the world at large, 
the rare birds of paradise, the toucan, the eagle, the condor and the emu, 
all are being exterminated to swell the annual profits of the millinery 
trade. The case is far more serious than the world at large knows, or 
even suspects. But for the profits, the birds would be safe; and no un- 
protected wild species can long escape the hounds of Commerce. 

But behold the list of rare, curious and beautiful birds that are to- 
day in grave peril : 




BEAUTIFUL AND CURIOUS BIRDS NOW BEING DESTROYED 
FOR THE FEATHER TRADE —(II) 

Resplendent Trogaa 
Silver Pheasant 
Toco Toucan 



Lyre Bird 
White Ibis 
Golden Eagle 



EXTERMINATION FOR WOMEN'S HATS 119 

List of Birds Now Being Exterminated for the London and 
Continental Feather Markets: 

Species. Locality. 

American Egret Venezuela, S. America, Mexico, etc. 

Snowy Egret Venezuela, S. America, Mexico, etc. 

Scarlet Ibis Tropical South America. 

" Green" Ibis Species not recognizable by its trade 

name. 

Herons, generally All unprotected regions. 

Marabou Stork Africa. 

Pelicans, all species All unprotected regions. 

Bustard Southern Asia, Africa. 

Greater Bird of Paradise New Guinea; Aru Islands. 

Lesser Bird of Paradise New Guinea. 

Red Bird of Paradise Islands of Waigiou and Batanta. 

Twelve-Wired Bird of Paradise New Guinea, Salwatti. 

Black Bird of Paradise Northern New Guinea. 

Rifle Bird of Paradise New Guinea generally. 

Jobi Bird of Paradise Island of Jobi. 

King Bird of Paradise New Guinea. 

Magnificent Bird of Paradise New Guinea. 

Impeyan Pheasant Nepal and India. 

Tragopan Pheasant Nepal and India. 

Argus Pheasant Malay Peninsula, Borneo. 

Silver Pheasant Burma and China. 

Golden Pheasant China. 

Jungle Cock East Indies and Burma. 

Peacock East Indies and India. 

Condor South America. 

Vultures, generally Where not protected. 

Eagles, generally All unprotected regions. 

Hawks, generally All unprotected regions. 

Crowned Pigeon, two species New Guinea. 

" Choncas " Locality unknown. 

Pitta East Indies. 

Magpie Europe. 

Touracou, or Plantain-Eater Africa. 

Velvet Birds Locality uncertain. 

" Grives " Locality uncertain. 

Mannikin South America. 

Green Parrot (now protected) India. 

" Dominos " (Sooty Tern) Tropical Coasts and Islands. 

Garnet Tanager South America. 

Grebe All unprotected regions. 

Green Merle Locality uncertain. 

" Horphang" Locality uncertain. 

Rhea South America. 



120 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

" Sixplet " Locality uncertain. 

Starling Europe. 

Tetras Locality not determined. 

Emerald-Breasted Hummingbird . . . West Indies, Cent, and S. America. 

Blue-Throated Hummingbird West Indies, Cent, and S. America. 

Amethyst Hummingbird West Indies, Cent, and S. America. 

Resplendent Trogon, several species . Central America. 

Cock-of-the-Rock South America. 

Macaw South America. 

Toucan South America. 

Emu Australia. 

Sun-Bird East Indies. 

Owl All unprotected regions. 

Kingfisher All unprotected regions. 

Jabiru Stork South America. 

Albatross All unprotected regions. 

Tern, all species All unprotected regions. 

Gull, all species All unprotected regions. 

In order to throw a spot-light on the most recent transactions in the 
London wild-birds'-plumage market, and to furnish a clear idea of what 
is to-day going on in London, Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam, I will set 
out in some detail the report of an agent whom I engaged to ascertain 
the London dealings in the plumage of wild birds that were killed espe- 
cially to furnish that plumage. As one item, let us take the sales in 
London in February, May and October, 1911, because they bring the 
subject well down to date. My agent's explanatory note is as follows: 

"These three sales represent six months. Very nearly double this 
quantity is sold by these four firms in a year. We must also take into 
consideration that all the feathers are not brought to the London mar- 
ket, and that very large shipments are also made direct to the raw-feather 
dealers and manufacturers of Paris and Berlin, and that Amsterdam also 
gets large quantities from the West Indies. For your purpose, I report upon 
three sales, at different periods of the year 1911, and as those sales do not 
vary much, you will be able to judge the consumption of birds in a year." 

The "aigrettes " of the feather trade come from egrets, and, being very 
light, it requires the death of several birds to jdeld one ounce. In many 
catalogues, the word "albatross" stands for the jabiru, a nearly-exter- 
minated species of giant stork, inhabiting South America. " Rhea " often 
stands for vulture plumage. 

If the feather dealers had deliberately attempted to form an educa- 
tional list of the most beautiful and the most interesting birds of the 
world, they could hardly have done better than they have done in the 
above list. If it were in my power to show the reader a colored plate 
of each species now being exterminated by the feather trade, he would 
be startled by the exhibit. That the very choicest birds of the whole 
avian world should be thus blotted out at the behest of vain and heart- 
less women is a shame, a disgrace and world-wide loss. 



EXTERMINATION FOR WOMEN'S HATS 



121 



LONDON FEATHER SALE OF FEBRUARY, 1911 



Sold by Hale & Sons 

Aigrettes 3,069 ounces 

Herons 960 " 

Birds of Paradise 1,920 skins 

Sold by Figgis & Co. 

Aigrettes 421 ounces 

Herons 103 " 

Paradise 414 skins 

Eagles 2,600 " 

Condors 1,580 " 

Bustards 2,400 " 

LONDON FEATHER vSALE 
Sold by Hale & Sons 

Aigrettes 1,390 ounces 

Herons 178 " 

Paradise 1,686 skins 

Red Ibis 868 " 

Junglecocks 1,550 " 

Parrots 1,700 " 

Herons 500 " 



Sold by Dalton & Young 

Aigrettes 1,606 ounces 

Herons 250 " 

Paradise 4,330 bodies 

Sold by Lewis & Peat 

Aigrettes 1,250 ounces 

Paradise 362 skins 

Eagles 384 " 

Trogons 206 ' ' 

Hummingbirds 24,800 " 

OF MAY, 1911 

Sold by Dalton & Young 

Aigrettes 2,921 ounces 

Herons 254 " 

Paradise 5,303 skins 

Golden Pheasants 1,000 " 



Sold by Figgis & Co. 

Aigrettes 201 ounces 

Herons 248 " 

Paradise 546 skins 

Falcons, Hawks 1,500 " 



Sold by Lewis & Peat 

Aigrettes 590 

Herons 190 

Paradise 60 

Trogons 348 

Hummingbirds 6,250 



LONDON FEATHER SALE OF OCTOBER, 1911 



Sold by Hale & Sons 

Aigrettes 1,020 ounces 

Paradise 2,209 skins 

Hummingbirds 10,040 " 

Bustard 28,000 quills 

Sold by Figgis & Co. 

Aigrettes 1,501 ounces 

Herons 140 " 

Paradise 318 skins 



Sold by Dalton Sf Young 

Aigrettes 5,879 

Heron 1,608 

Paradise 2,850 

Condors 1,500 

Eagles 1,900 

Sold by Lewis & Peat 

Aigrettes 1,680 

Herons 400 

Birds of Paradise 700 



ounces 
skins 



ounces 
skins 



ounces 
skins 



If I am correctly informed, the London feather trade admits that it 
requires six egrets to yield one "ounce" of aigrette plumes. This being 
the case, the 21,528 ounces sold as above stand for 129,168 egrets killed 
for nine months' supply of egret plumes, for London alone. 

The total number of bird corpses auctioned during these three sales 
is as follows : 

Aigrettes, 21,528 ounces = 129,168 Egrets. 



Herons, 2,683 



13,598 Herons. 

20,698 Birds of Paradise. 

41,090 Hummingbirds. 

9,464 Eagles, Condors, etc. 

9,472 Other Birds. 



Total number of birds 223,490 



122 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

It is to be remembered that the sales listed above cover the trans- 
actions of four firms only, and do not in any manner take into account 
the direct importations from Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam of manufac- 
turers and other dealers. The defenders of the feather trade are at great 
pains to assure the world that in the monthly, bi-monthly and quarterly 
sales, feathers often appear in the market twice in the same year; and this 
statement is made for them in order to be absolutely fair. Recent ex- 
aminations of the plume catalogues for an entire year, marked with the 
price paid for each item, reveals very few which are blank, indicating no 
sale! The subtractions of the duplicated items would alter the result 
only very slightly. 

The full extent of England's annual consumption of the plumage of 
wild birds slaughtered especially for the trade never has been deter- 
mined. I doubt whether it is possible to ascertain it. The information 
that we have is so fragmentary that in all probability it reflects only a 
small portion of the whole truth, but for all that, it is siifficient to prove 
the case of the Defenders of the Birds vs. the London Chamber of Com- 
merce. 

IMPORTS OF FEATHERS AND DOWN (ORNAMENTAL) FOR THE 

YEAR 1910 

Potmds. Value. 

Venezuela 8,398 $191,058 

Brazil 787 5,999 

Japan 2,284 3,830 

China 6,329 16,308 

Tripoli 345 900 

Egypt 21,047 89,486 

Java, Sumatra, and Borneo 15,703 186,504 

Cape of Good Hope 709,406* 9,747,146 

British India 18,359 22,137 

Hong-Kong 310 3,090 

British West Indies 30 97 

Other British Colonies 10,438 21,938 

* Chiefly Ostrich feathers. 

The above does not take into account the feathers from game birds 
received in England from France, Germany, Austria-Hungar^^ Belgium 
and the Netherlands. 

As a final side-light on the quantity of egret and heron plumes offered 
and sold in London during the twelve months ending in April, 1912, we 
ofi'er ths following exhibit : 

"OSPREY" FEATHERS (EGRET AND HERON PLUMES) SOLD IN LONDON 

DURING THE YEAR ENDING APRIL. 1912 

Offered. Sold. 

Venezuelan, long and medium 11,617 ouncet; 7,072 ounces 

Venezuelan, mixed Heron 4,043 " 2,539 " 

Brazilian 3,335 " 1,810 " 

Chinese 641 " 576 " 

19,636 ounces 11,997 ounces 
Birds of Paradise, plumes (2 plumes = 1 

bird) 29,385 24,579 




BEAUTIFUL AND CURIOUS BIRDS NOW BEING DESTROYED 
FOR THE FEATHER TRADE— (III) 
Griffon Vulture r ^ 

Herring Gull Condor 

Jabiru Emeu 

Indian Adjutant 



124 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFh 

Under the head of "Hummingbirds Not Wanted," Mr. Downhamis 
at great pains to convey* the distinct impression that to-day humming- 
birds are scorned by the feather trade, and the demand for them is dead. 
/ believed him — until my agent turned in the following statement : 

Hummingbirds sold by Lewis & Peat, London, February, 1911 . . . .24,800 

Hummingbirds sold by Lewis & Peat, London, May, 1911 6,250 

Hummingbirds sold by Hale & Sons, London, October, 1911 10,040 

Total 41,090 

It is useless for anyone to assert that these birds were merely 
"offered," and not actually sold, as Mr. Downham so laboriously ex- 
plains is the regular course with hummingbird skins ; for that will deceive 
no intelligent person. The statement published above comes to me 
direct, from an absolutely competent and reliable source. 

Undoubtedly the friends of birds, and likewise their enemies, will be 
interested in the prices at which the skins of the most beautiful birds of 
the world are sold in London, prior to their annihilation by the feather 
industry. I submit the following exhibit, copied from the circular of 
Messrs. Lewis & Peat. It is at least of academic interest. 

PRICES OF RARE AND BEAUTIFUL BIRD SKINS IN LONDON 

Condor skins $3.50 to $5.75 

Condor wing feathers, each 05 

Impeyan Pheasant 66 " 2.50 

Argus Pheasant 3.60 " 3.85 

Tragopan Pheasant 2.70 

Silver Pheasant 3.50 

Golden Pheasant 34 " .46 

Greater Bird of Paradise: 

Light Plumes: Medium to giants 10.32 " 21.00 

Medium to long, worn 7.20 " 13.80 

Slight def. and plucked 2.40 " 6.72 

Dark Plumes: Medium to good long 7.20 " 24.60 

12-Wired Bird of Paradise 1.44 " 1.80 

Rubra Bird of Paradise 2.50 

Rifie Bird of Paradise 1.14 " 1.38 

King Bird of Paradise 2.40 

"Green" Bird of Paradise 38 " .44 

East Indian Kingfisher 06 " .07 

East Indian Parrots .03 

Peacock Necks, gold and blue 24 " .66 

Peacock Necks, blue and green .36 

Scarlet Ibis 14 " .24 

Toucan breasts 22 " .26 

Red Tanagers .09 

Orange Oriels .05 

Indian Crows' breasts .13 

Indian lays .04 

Amethyst Hummingbirds .01 J4 

Hummingbird, various 3/16 of .01 " .02 

Hummingbird, others 1/32 of .01 " .01 

Egret ("Osprey") skins 1.08 " 2.78 

♦"The Feather Trade," by C. F. Downham, p. 63-4. 



EXTERMINATION FOR WOMEN'S HATS 125 

Egret ("Osprey") skins, long 2.40 

Vulture feathers, per pound 36 " 4.56 

Eagle, wing feathers, bundles of 100 .09 

Hawk, wing feathers, bundles of 100 .12 

Mandarin I^ucks, per skin .15 

Pheasant tail feathers, per pound l.SO 

Crown Pigeon heads, Victoria 1.68 " 2.50 

Crown Pigeon heads, Coronatus 84 " 1.20 

Emu skins 4.56 " 4.80 

Cassowary plumes, per ounce 3.48 

Swan skins 72 " .74 

Kingfisher skins 07 " .09 

African Golden Cuckoo 1.68 

Many thouj^hts are suggested by these London lists of l:)ird slaughter 
and loot. 

It will be noticed that the breast of the grebe has almost wholly dis- 
appeared from the feather market and from women's hats. The reason 
is that there are no longer enough birds of that group to hold a place in 
the London market ! Few indeed are the Americans who know that from 
1900 to 1908 the lake region of southern Oregon was the scene of the 
slaughter of uncountable thousands of those birds, which continued until 
the grebes were almost exterminated. 

When the wonderful lyre-bird of Australia had been almost extermi- 
nated for its tail feathers, its open slaughter was stopped by law, and a 
heavy fine was imposed on exportation, amounting, I have been told, to 
$250 for each oifense. My latest news of the lyre-bird was of the 
surreptitious exportation of 200 skins to the London feather market. 

In India, the smuggling outward of the skins of protected birds is 
constantly going on. Occasionally an exoorter is caught and fined ; but 
that does not stop the traffic. 

Bird-lovers must now bid farewell forever to all the birds of paradise. 
Nothing but the legal closing of the world's markets against their plumes 
and skins can save any of them. They never were numerous; nor does 
any species range over a wide area. They are strictly insular, and the is- 
land homes of some of them are very small. Take the great bird of para- 
dise (Paradisea apoda) as an illustration. On Oct. 2, 1912, at IndianapoHs, 
Indiana, a city near the center of the United States, in three show-windows 
within 100 feet of the headquarters of the Fourth National Conservation 
Congress, I counted 11 stuffed heads and 11 complete sets of plumes of 
this bird, displayed for sale. The prices ranged from $30 to $47.50 each! 
And while I looked, a large lady approached, pointed her finger at the 
remains of a greater bird of paradise, and with grim determination, said 
to her shopping companion : "There! I want one o' them, an' I'm 
agoin' to have it, too!" 

Says Mr. James Buckland in "Pros and Cons of the Plumage Bill": 

' 'Mr Goodfellow has returned within the last few weeks from a second 
expedition to new Guinea. * * One can now walk, he states, miles 
and miles through the former haunts of these birds [of paradise] without 



126 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

seeing or hearing even the commonest species. When I reflect on this 
sacrilege, I am lost in wonder at the apathy of the British public." 

Mr. Carl Hagenbeck wrote me only three months ago that "the 
condors of the Andes are all being exterminated for their feathers, and 
these birds are now very difficult to obtain." 

The egret and heron plumes, known under the trade name of " osprey, 
etc., feathers," form by far the most important item in each feather sale. 
There are fifteen grades! They are sold by the ounce, and the prices 
range all the way from twenty-eight cents per ounce for "mixed heron" 
to two hundred and twenty-five shillings ($45.60) per ounce for the best 
Brazilian "short selected," on February 7, 1912! Is it any wonder that 
in Philadelphia the prices of finished aigrettes, ready to be worn, runs 
from $20 to $125! 

The plumes that run up into the big figures are the "short selected" 
coming from the followmg localities, and quoted at the prices set down 
here in shillings and pence. Count the shilling at twenty-four cents, 
United States money. 

PRICES OF "SHORT SELECTED" EGRET AND HERON PLUMES, IN 
LONDON ON FEBRUARY 7, 1912 

(Lewis & Peat's List) 

East Indies per ounce, 117/6 to 207/6 = $49.80 max. 

Rangoon " " 150/0 " 192/6 = 46.20 " 

China " " 130/0 " 245/0 = 58.80 " 

Brazil " " 200/0 " 225/0 = 54.00 " 

Venezuela " " 165/0 " 222/6 = 53.40 " 

The total offering of these "short selected" plumes in December 
1911, was 689 ounces, and in February, 1912, it was 230 ounces. 

Now with these enormous prices prevailing, is it any wonder that 
the egrets and herons are being relentlessly pursued to the uttermost 
ends of the earth? I think that any man who really knows the habits 
of egrets and herons, and the total impossibility of any quantity of their 
shed feathers being picked up in a marketable state, must know in his 
heart that if the London and continental feather markets keep open a 
few years longer, every species that furnishes "short selected" plumes 
will be utterly exterminated from off the face of the earth. 

Let the English people make no mistake about this, nor be fooled by 
any fairy tales of the feather trade about Venezuelan "garceros," and 
vast quantities of valuable plumes picked off the bushes and out of the 
mud. Those carefully concocted egret-farm stories make lovely reading, 
but the reader who examines the evidence will soon decide the extent of 
their truthfulness. I think that they contain not even ten per cent of 
truth ; and I shall not rest until the stories of Leon Laglaize and Mayeul 
Grisol have been put to the test in the regions where they originated. 

h Jew plumes may be picked out of the jungle, yes; but as for any 
commercial quantity, it is at present beyond belief. Besides, we have 
direct, eye-witness testimony to the contrary. 



EXTERMINATION FOR WOMEN'S HATS 127 

It must not be inferred that the friends of birds in England have 
been idle or silent in the presence of the London feather trade. On the 
contrary, the Royal Society for the Protection of Wild Birds and Mr. 
James Buckland have so strongly attacked the feather industry that 
the London Chamber of Commerce has felt called upon to come to its 
rescue. Mr. Buckland, on his own individual account, has done yeoman 
service to the cause, and his devotion to the birds, and his tireless 
energy, are both almost beyond the reach of praise in words. At the 
last moment before going to press I learn that the birds'-plumage bill 
has achieved the triumph of a "first reading" in Parliament, which looks 
as if success is at last in sight. The powerful pamphlet "that he has 
written, published and circulated at his own expense, entitled "Pros and 
Cons of the Plumage Bill," is a splendid effort. What a pity it is that 
more individuals are not similarly inspired to make independent effort in 
the protection cause! But, strange to say, few indeed are the men who 
have either the nerve or the ability to "go it alone." 

On the introduction in Parliament of the bill to save the birds from 
the feather trade, it was opposed (through the efforts of the Chamber of 
Commerce), on the ground that if any bill against the sale of plumes 
should pass, and plumes could not be sold, the London business in wild- 
bird skins and feathers "would immediately be transferred to the con- 
tinent!" 

In the face of that devastating and altogether horrible prospect, and 
because the London feather dealers "need the money," the bill was at 
first defeated — to the great joy of the Chamber of Commerce and Mr. 
Downham; but the cause of birds will win in the end, because it is Right. 

The feather dealers have been shrewdly active in the defense of their 
trade, and the methods they have employed for influencing public opinion 
hav ^ quite outshone those put forth by their brethren in America. I have 
before me a copy of a booklet bearing the name of Mr. C. F. Downham 
as the author, and the London Chamber of Commerce has loaned its 
good name as publisher. Altogether it is a very shrewd piece of work, 
even though its arguments in justification of bird slaughter for the 
feather market are too absurd and weak for serious consideration. 

The chief burden of the defender of bird slaughter for millinery pur- 
poses is on account of the destruction of egrets and herons, but partic- 
ularly the former. To offset as far as possible the absolutely true charge 
that egrets bear their best plumes in their breeding season, when the 
helpless young are in the nest and the parent birds must be killed 
to obtain the plumes, the feather trade has obtained from three French- 
men — Leon Laglaize, Mayeul Grisol, and F. Geay — a beautiful and 
plausible story to the effect that in Venezuela the enormous output of 
egret plumes has been obtained by picking up, off the bushes and out of 
the water and mud, the shed feathers of those birds! According to the story, 
Venezuela is full of egret farms, called "garceros," — where the birds 
breed and moult under strict supervision, and kindly drop their feathers 
in such places that it is possible to find them, and to pick them up, in a 



128 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 



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THE FIGHT IN ENGLAND AGAINST THE USE OF WILD BIRD'S PLUMAGE 
IN THE MILLINERY TRADE 

Sandwich-men Employed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, 
that Patroled London Streets in July, 1911. 

high state of preservation! And we are asked to believe that it is i.hese 
very Venezuelan picked-up feathers that command in London the high 
price of ^44 per ounce. 

Mr. Laglaize is especially exploited by Mr. Downham, as a French 
traveler of high standing, and well known in the zoological museums of 
France; but, sad to say, when Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn cabled to the 
Museum of Natural History in Paris, inquiring about Mr. Laglaize, the 
cable flashed back the one sad word: " Inconnu!" (Unknown!) 

I think it entirely possible that enough shed feathers have been picked 
up in the reeking swamps of Venezuela, on the upper tributaries of the 
Orinoco, to afiEord an excuse for the beautiful story of Mr. Laglaize. Any 
shrewd individual with money, and the influence that money secures, 
couM put up just such a "plant" as I firmly believe has been put up by 
some one in Venezuela. I will guarantee that I could accomplish such 
a job in Venezuela or Brazil, in four months' time, at an expense not 
exceeding one thousand dollars. 

That the great supply of immaculately perfect egret plumes that 
annually come out of Venezuela could by any possibility be picked up 
in the swamps where they were shed and dropped by the egrets, is 



EXTERMINATION FOR WOMEN'S HATS 129 

entirely preposterous and incredible. The whole proposition is de- 
nounced by several men of standing and experience, none of whom are 
''inconnu." 

As a sweeping refutation of the fantastic statements regarding 
"garceros," published by Mr. Downham as coming from Messrs. La- 
glaize, Grisol and Geay, I offer the written testimony of an American 
gentleman who at this moment owns and maintains within a few yards 
of his residence a large preserve of snowy egrets and herons, the former 
representing the species which furnishes egret plumes exactly similar to 
those shipped from Venezuela and Brazil. If the testimony of Mr. 
Mcllhenny is not sufficient to stamp the statements of the three French- 
men quoted by Mr. Downham as absolute and thoroughly misleading 
falsehoods, then there is no such thing in this world as evidence. I sug- 
gest a perusal of the statements of the three Frenchmen who are quoted 
with such confidence by Mr. Downham and published by the Hon. 
Chamber of Commerce at London, and then a careful reading of the 
following letter : 

Avery Island, La., June 17, 1912. 
Dear Mr. Hornaday: — 

I have before me your letter of June 8th, asking for information as to whether or no 
egrets shed their plumes at their nesting places in sufficient quantities to enable them 
to be gathered commercially. I most emphatically wish to state that it is impossible 
to gather at the nesting places of these birds any quantity of their plumes. I have 
nesting within 50 yards of where I am now sitting dictating this letter not less than 20,000 
pairs of the various species of herons and egrets, and there are fully 2, .500 pairs of snowy 
herons nesting within my preserve. 

During the nesting season, which covers the months of April, May and June, I am 
through this heronry in a small canoe almost every day, and often twice a day. I have 
had these herons under my close inspection for the past 17 years, and I have not in any 
one season picked up or seen more than half a dozen discarded plumes. Such plumes 
as I have picked up, I have kept on my desk, and given to the people who were inter- 
ested. I remember that last year I picked up four plumes of the snowy heron that 
were in one bunch. I think these must have been plucked out by the birds fighting. 

This year I have found only one plume so far. I enclose it herewith. You will notice 
that it is one of the shorter plumes, and is badly worn at the end, as have been all the 
plumes which I have picked up in my heronry. 

I am positive that it is not possible for natural shed plumes to be gathered commer- 
ciall}^ I have a number of times talked with plume hunters from Venezuela and other 
South American countries, and I have never heard of any egret feathers being gathered 
by their being picked up after the birds have shed them. 

I have heard of a number of heronries in South America that are protected by the 
land owners for the purpose of gathering a yearly crop of egret plumes, but this crop is 
gathered always by shooting a certain percentage of the birds. This shooting is done 
by experts with 22-calibre rifles, and does not materially disturb the nesting colony. I 
have known of two men who have been engaged in killing the birds on large estates in 
South America, who were paid regular salaries for their services as egret hunters. 

Very truly yours. 

E. A. McIlhenny. 

I am more than willing to set the above against the fairy tale of 
Mr. Laglaize. 

Here is the testimony of A. H. Meyer, an ex-plume-hunter, who for 
nine years worked in Venezuela. His sworn testimony was laid before 



130 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

the Legislature of the State of New York, in 1911, when the New York 
Milliners' Association was frantically endeavoring to secure the repeal 
of the splendid Dutcher law. This witness was produced by the National 
Association of Audubon Societies. 

"My attention has been called to the fact that certain commercial 
interests in this city are circulating stories in the newspapers and else- 
where to the effect that the aigrettes used in the millinery trade come 
chiefly from Venezuela, where they are gathered from the ground in the 
large garceros, or breeding-colonies, of white herons. 

"I wish to state that I have personally engaged in the work of 
collecting the plumes of these birds in Venezuela. This was my business 
for the years 1896 to 1905, inclusive. I am thoroughly conversant with 
the methods employed in gathering egret and snowy heron plumes in 
Venezuela, and I wish to give the following statement regarding the 
practices employed in procuring these feather: " 

"The birds gather in large colonies to rear tneir young. They have 
the plumes only during the mating and nesting season. After the period 
when they are employed in caring for their young, it is found that the 
plumes are virtually of no commercial value, because of the worn and 
frayed condition to which they have been reduced. It is the custom in 
Venezuela to shoot the birds while the young are in the nests. A few 
feathers of the large white heron (American egret), known as the Garza 
blanca, can be picked up of a morning about their breeding places, but 
these are of small value and are known as "dead feathers." They are 
worth locally not over three dollars an ounce; while the feathers taken 
from the bird, known as "live feathers," are worth fifteen dollars an 
ounce. 

"My work led me into every part of Venezuela and Colombia where 
these birds are to be found, and I have never yet found or heard of any 
garceros that were guarded for the purpose of simply gathering the 
feathers from the ground. No such condition exists in Venezuela. The 
story is absolutely without foundation, in my opinion, and has simply 
been put forward for commercial purposes. 

"The natives of the country, who do virtually all of the hunting for 
feathers, are not provident in their nature, and their practices are of a 
most cruel and brutal nature. I have seen them_ frequently pull the 
plumes from wounded birds, leaving the crippled birds to die of starva- 
tion, unable to respond to the cries of their young in the nests above, 
which were calling for food. I have known these people to tie and prop 
up wounded egrets on the marsh where they would attract the attention of 
other birds flying by. These decoys they keep in this position until they die 
of their wounds, or from the attacks of insects. I have seen the terrible red 
ants of that country actually eating out the eyes of these wounded, helpless 
birds that were tied up by the plume-hunters. I could write you many pages 
of the horrors practiced in gathering aigrette feathers in Venezuela by 
the natives for the millinery trade of Paris and New York. 



EXTERMINATION FOR WOMEN'S HATS 131 

' ' To illustrate the comparatively small number of dead feathers which 
are collected, I will mention that in one year I and my associates shipped 
to New York eighty pounds of the plumes of the large heron and 
twelve pounds of the little recurved plumes of the snowy heron. In this 
whole lot there were not over five pounds of plumes that had been 
gathered from the ground — and these were of little value. The plume- 
birds have been nearly exterminated in the United States and Mexico, 
and the same condition of affairs will soon exist in tropical America. 
This extermination will come about because of the fact that the young 
are left to starve in the nest when the old birds are killed, any other 
statement made by interested parties to the contrary notwithstanding. 

"I am so incensed at the ridiculously absurd and misleading stories 
that are being published on this question that I want to give you this 
letter, and, before delivering it to you, shall take oath to its truthfulness." 

Here is the testimony of Mr. Caspar Whitney, of New York, formerly 
editor of Outing Magazine and Outdoor America: 

"During extended travel throughout South America, from 1903 to 
1907, inclusive, I journeyed, on three separate occasions, by canoe (1904- 
1907), on the Lower Orinoco and Apure rivers and their tributaries. 
This is the region, so far as Venezuela is concerned, in which is the 
greatest slaughter of white herons for their plumage, or more specifically 
for the marital plumes, which are carried only in the mating and breed- 
ing season, and are known in the millinery trade as 'aigrettes.' 

"There is literally no room for question. The snowy herons are 
killed exactly as I describe. It is the custom of all those who hunt for 
the millinery trade, and is recognized by the natives as the usual method. " 

Here is the testimony of Mr. Julian A. Dimock, of Peekamose, N. Y., 
the famous outdoor photographer, and illustrator of "Florida Enchant- 
ments"; 

"I know a goodly number of the plume-hunters of Florida. I have 
camped with them, and talked to them. I have heard their tales, and 
even full accounts of the ' shooting-up ' of an egret rookery. Never has 
a man in Florida suggested to me that plumes could be obtained without 
killing the birds. I have known the wardens, and have visited rookeries 
after they had been 'shot-up,' and the evidence all pointed to the ever- 
lasting use of the gun. It is certainly not true that the plumes can he 
obtained without killing the birds bearing them. 

"Nineteen years ago, I visited the Cuthbert Rookery with one of the 
men who discovered the birds nesting in that lake. He and his partner 
had sold the plumes gathered there for more than a thousand dollars. 
He showed me how they hid in the bushes and shot the birds. He even 
gave me a chance to watch him kill two or three birds. 

' ' I know personally the man chiefly responsible for the slaughter of 
the birds at Alligatcr Bay. He laughed at the idea of getting plumes with- 
out killing the birds! I well know the man who shot the birds up Rogers 
River, and even saw some of the empty shells left on the ground by him. 




YOUNG EGRETS, UNABLE TO FLY, STARVING 
The Parent Birds had Been Killed bv Plume Hunters 



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SNOWY EGRET, DEAD ON HER NEST 

Wounded in the Feeding-Grounds, and Came Home to Die. Photographed in a Florida Rookery 
Protected by the National Association of Audubon Societies 



EXTERMINATION FOR WOMEN'S HATS 133 

I have camped with Seminoles, whites, blacks, outlaws, and those within 
the pale, connected with plume-hunting, and all tell the same story : The 
birds are shot to get the plumes. The evidence of my own eyes, and the 
action of the birds themselves, convinces me that there is not a shadow 
of doubt concerning this point." 

This sworn testimony from Mr. T. J. Ashe, of Key West, Florida, is 
very direct and to the point : 

"I have seen many moiilted and dropped feathers from wild plumed 
birds. I have never seen a moulted or dropped feather that was fit for 
anything. It is the exception when a plumed bird drops feathers of any 
value while in flight. Whatever feathers are so dropped are those that 
are frayed, worn out, and forced out by the process of moulting. The 
moulting season is not during the hatching season, but is after the 
hatching season. The shedding, or moulting, takes place once a year; 
and during this moulting season the feathers, after having the hard usage 
of the year from wind, rain and other causes, when dropped are of 
absolutely no commercial value." 

Mr. Arthur T. Wayne, of Mount Pleasant, S. C, relates in sworn 
testimony his experience in attempting to secure egret plumes without 
killing the birds: 

"It is utterly impossible to get fifty egret plumes from any colony of 
breeding birds without shooting the birds. Last spring, I went twice a 
week to a breeding colony of American and snowy egrets, from early in 
April until June 8. Despite the fact that I covered miles of territory in 
a boat, I picked up but two American egret plumes (which I now have) ; 
but not a single snowy egret plume did I see, nor did my companion, 
who accompanied me on every trip. 

" I saw an American egret plume on the water, and left it, purposely, 
to see whether it would sink or not. Upon visiting the place a few day^; 
afterwards, the plume was not in evidence, undoubtedly having sunl. . 
The plumes are chiefly shed in the air while the birds are going to o:- 
coming from their breeding grounds. If that millinery plume law is re- 
pealed, the fate of the American and snowy egrets is sealed, for the few 
birds that remain will be shot to the very last one." 

Any man who ever has been in an egret rookery (and I have) knows 
that the above testimony is true! The French story of the beautiful 
and smoothly-running egret farms in Venezuela is preposterous, save for 
a mere shadow of truth. I do not say that no egret plumes could be picked 
up, but I do assert that the total quantity obtainable in one year in that 
way would be utterly trivial. 

No; the "ospre^^s" of the British feather market come from slaugh- 
tered egrets and herons, killed in the breeding season. Let the British 
public and the British Parliament make no mistake about that. If they 
wish the trade to continue, let it be based on the impregnable ground 
that the merchants want the money, and not on a fantastic dream that 
is too silly to deceive even a child that knows birds. 



134 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

The use or disuse of wild birds' plumage as millinery ornaments is 
another of those wild-life subjects regarding which there is no room for 
argument. To assert that the feather-dealers want the business for the 
money it brings them is not argument! We have seen many a steam 
roller go over Truth, and Right, and Justice, by main strength and red- 
hot power; but Truth and Right refuse to stay fiat down. There is on 
this earth not one wild-animal species — mammal, bird or reptile — that 
can long withstand exploitation for commercial purposes. Even the 
whales of the deep sea, the walrus of the arctic regions, the condors of the 
Andes and alligators of the Everglade morasses are no exception to the 
universal rule. 

In Mr. Downham's book there is much fallacious reasoning, and many 
conclusions that are not borne out by the facts. For example, he says 
that no species of bird of paradise has been diminished in number by 
slaughter for the feather trade; that Florida still contains a supply of 
egrets; that the decrease in bird H'e should be charged to the spread 
of cities, towns and farms, and not to the trade; that the trade was "in 
no way responsible" for the slaughter of three hundred thousand gulls 
and albatrosses on Laysan Island ! 

I have space to notice one other important erroneous conclusion that 
Mr. Downham pubhshes in his book, on page 105. He says: 

"The destruction of birds in foreign countries is something that no 
trade can direct or control." 

This is an amazing declaration; and absolutely contrary to experience. 
Let me prove what I say by a fresh and incontestable illustration : 

Prior to April, 1911, when Governor Dix signed the Bayne law against 
the sale of wild native game in the State of New York, Currituck County, 
N. C, was a vast slaughter-pen for wild fowl. No power or persuasion 
had availed to induce the people of North Carolina to check, or regulate, 
or in any manner mitigate that slaughter of geese, ducks and swans. It 
was estimated that two hundred thousand wild fowl were annually 
slaughtered there. 

We who advocated the Bayne law said: "Close the New York mar- 
kets against Currituck birds, and you will stop a great deal of the 
slaughter." 

We cleaned our Augean stable. The greatest game market in America 
was absolutely closed. 

Last winter (1911) the annual killing of wild fowl was fully fifty per 
cent less than during previous years. In one small town, twenty pro- 
fessional duck shooters went entirely out of business — because they 
couldn't sell their ducks! The dealers refused to buy them. The result 
was exactly what we predicted it would be ; and this year, it is reported 
over and over that ducks are more plentiful in New England than they 
have been in twenty years previously! The result is wonderful, because 
,so quick. 

Beyond all question, the feather merchants of London, Paris and Ber- 



EXTERMINATION FOR WOMEN'S HATS 



135 




MISCELLANEOUS BIRD SKINS. S CENTS EACH 
Purchased by the New York Zoological Society from the Quarterly Sale in London, August, 1912 

lin absolutely control the bird-killers of Venezuela, China, New Guinea. 
Mexico and South America. Let the word go forth that "the trade" 
is no longer permitted to buy and sell egret and heron plumes, skins of 
birds of paradise and condor feathers, and presto ! the killing industry 
falls dead the next moment. 

Yes, indeed, members of the British Parliament: it is easily within 
your power to wipe out at a single stroke fully one-half of the bird 
slaughter for fancy feathers. It can be done just as we wiped out one- 
half the annual duck slaughter in wickedly-wasteful North Carolina ! 

The feather trade absolutely does control the killing situation! Now, 
will the people of England clean house by controlling the feather trade ? 
If a hundred species of the most beautiful birds of the world must be 
exterminated for the feather trade, let the odium rest elsewhere than on 
the people of England. 

The bird-lovers of America may rest assured that the bird-lovers of 
England — a mighty host — are neither careless nor indifferent regarding 
the wild-birds' plumage business. On the contrary, several bills have 
been brought before ParHament intended to regulate or prohibit the 
traffic, and a measure of vast importance to the birds of the world is now 
before the House of Commons. It is backed by Mr. Percy Alden, M.P., 
by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, by the Selbourne 
Society, and by Mr. James Buckland— a host in himself. For years past 
that splendidly-equipped and well-managed Royal Society has waged 



136 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

ceaseless warfare for the birds. Its activity has been tremendous, and 
its membership Hst contains many of the finest names in England. The 
address of the Honorary Secretary, Frank E. Lemon, Esq., is 23 Queen 
Anne's Gate, London, S.W. 

Naturally, these influences are opposed by the Textile Trade Section of 
the London Chamber of Commerce, and their only argument consists 
of the plea that if London doesn't get the money out of the feather trade, 
the Continent will get it! A reasonable, logical, magnificent and con- 
vincing excuse for wholesale bird slaughter, truly ! 

Mr. Buckland has been informed from the Continent that the people 
of France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium are waiting and 
watching to see what England is going to do with the question, "To 
slaughter, or not to slaughter?" For England has no monopoly of the 
birds' plumage trade, not by any means. Says Mr. Buckland ("Pros and 
Cons of the Plumage Bill," page 17): 

"As regards the vast majority of fancy feathers used in millinery, 
the Continent receives its own supplies. The feathers of the hundreds of 
thousands of albatrosses which are killed in the North Pacific all go 
to Paris. Of the untold thousands of 'magpies,' owls, and other species 
which come from Peru, not one skin or feather crosses the Channel. The 
white herons of the Upper Senegal and the Niger are being rapidly ex- 
terminated at the instigation of the feather merchants, but not one of 
the plumes reaches London. Paris receives direct a large supply of 
aigrettes from South America and elsewhere. * * * 'y\iq millions 
of swallows and other migratory birds which are killed annually as they 
pass through Italy, France and Spain on their way north, supply the 
millinery trade of Europe with an incredible quantity of wings and other 
plumage, but none of it is distributed from London. * * * London, 
as a distributing center, has no monopoly of the trade in raw feathers." 

Mr. Buckland's green-covered pamphlet is a powerful document, and 
both his facts and his conclusions seem to be unassailable. The author's 
address is Royal Colonial Institute, Northumberland Ave., London, W.C. 

The duty of the civilized nations of Europe is perfectly plain. The 
savage and bloody business in feathers torn from wild birds should be 
stopped, completely and forever. If the commons will not arise and 
reform the odious business out of existence, then the kings and queens 
and presidents should do their plain duty. In the suppression of a world 
crime like this it is clearly a case of noblesse oblige! 



CHAPTER XIV. (^ 

THE BIRD TRAGEDY ON LAYSAN ISLAND 

This chapter is a curtain-dropper to the preceding chapter. As a 
clearly-cut, concrete case, the reader will find it unique and unsurpassed. 
It should be of lively interest to every American because the tragedy 
occurred on American territory. 

In the far-away North Pacific Ocean, about seven hundred miles 
from Honolulu west-b'-north, lies the small island of Laysan. It is level, 
sandy, poorly planted by nature, and barren of all things likely to enlist 
the attention of predatory man. To the harassed birds of mid-ocean, it 
seemed like a secure haven, and for ages past it has been inhabited only 
by them. There several species of sea birds, large and small, have found 
homes and breeding places. Until 1909, the inhabitants consisted of the 
Laysan albatross, black-footed albatross, sooty tern, gray-backed tern, 
noddy tern, Hawaiian tern, white tern, Bonin petrel, two shearwaters, 
the red-tailed tropic bird, two boobies and the man-of-war bird. 

Laysan Island is two miles long by one and one-half miles broad, and 
at times it has been literally covered with birds. Its bird life was first 
brought prominently to notice in 1891, bv Henry Palmer, the agent 
of Hon. Walter Rothschild, and in 1902 and 1903 Walter K. Fisher and 
W. A. Bryan made further observations. 

Ever since 1891 the bird life on Laysan has been regarded as cue of 
the wonders of the bird world. One of the photographs taken prior to 
1909 shows a vast plain, apparently a square mile in area, covered and 
crowded with Laysan albatrosses. They stand there on the level sand, 
serene, bulky and immaculate. Thousands of birds appear in one 
view — a very remarkable sight. 

Naturally man, the ever-greedy, began to cast about for ways by 
which to convert some product of that feathered host into money. At 
first guano and eggs were collected. A tramway was laid down and 
small box-cars were introduced, in which the collected material was 
piled and pushed down to the packing place. 

For several years this went on, and the birds themselves were not 
molested. At last, however, a tentacle of the feather-trade octopus 
reached out to Laysan. In an evil moment in the spring ^f 1909, a 
predatory individual of Honolulu and elsewhere, named^Max Schlerruner, 
decided that the wings of those albatross, gulls and terns^duld be torn 
off and sent to Japan, whence they would undoubtedly be shipped to 





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BIRD TRAGEDY ON LAYS AN ISLAND 



139 




LAYSAN ALBATROSS ROOKERY. AFTER THE GREAT SLAUGHTER 
The Same Ground as Shown in the Preceding Picture, Photographed in 1911 by Prof. Homer R. Dill 



Paris, the special inarket for the wings of sea-birds slaughtered in the 
North Pacific. 

Schlemmer the Slaughterer bought a cheap vessel, hired twenty- 
three phlegmatic and cold-blooded Japanese laborers, and organized a 
raid on Laysan. With the utmost secrecy he sailed from Honolulu, 
landed his bird-killers upon the sea-bird wonderland, and turned them 
loose upon the birds. 

For several months they slaughtered diligently and without mercy. 
Apparently it was the ambition of Schlemmer to kill every bird on the 
island. 

By the time the bird-butchers had accumulated between three and 
four car-loads of wings, and the carnage was half finished, William A. 
Bryan, Professor of Zoology in the College of Honolulu, heard of it and 
promptly wired the United States Government. 

Without the loss of a moment the Secretary of the. Navy despatched 
the revenue cutter Thetis to the shambles of Laysan. When Captain 
Jacobs arrived he found that in round numbers about three hundred thou- 
sand birds had been destroyed, and all that remained of them were 
several acres of bones and dead bodies, and about three carloads of 
wings, feathers and skins. It was evident that Schlemmer's intention 
was to kill all the birds on the island, and only the timely arrival of the 
Thetis frustrated that bloody plan. 

The twenty-three Japanese poachers were arrested and taken to 
Honolulu for trial, and the Thetis also brought away all the stolen wings 
and plumage with the exception of one shedful of wings that had to be 
left behind on account of lack of carrying space. That old shed, with 



\- 



140 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 




ACRES OP GULL AND ALBATROSS BONES 
Photographed on Laysan Island by H. R. Dill, 1911 

one end torn out, and supposed to contain nearly fifty thousand pairs of 
wings, was photographed by Prof. Dill in 1911, as shown herewith. 

Three hundred thousand albatrosses, gulls, terns and other birds 
were butchered to make a Schlemmer holiday ! Had the arrival of the 
Thetis been delayed, it is reasonably certain that every bird on Laysan 
would have been killed to satisfy the wolfish rapacity of one money- 
grubbing white man. 

In 1911, the Iowa State University despatched to Laysan a scientific 
expedition in charge of Prof. Homer R. Dill. The party landed on the 
island on April 24 and remained until June 5, and the report of Pro- 
fessor Dill (U. S. Department of Agriculture) is consumedly interesting 
to the friends of birds. Here is what he has said regarding the evidences 
of bird-slaughter : 

"Our first impression of Laysan was that the poachers had stripped 
the place of bird life. An area of over 300 acres on each side of the 
buildings was apparently abandoned. Only the shearwaters moaning 
in their burrows, the little wingless rail skulking from one grass tussock 
to another, and the saucy finch remained. It is an excellent example 
of what Prof. Nutting calls the survival of the inconspicuous. 

"Here on every side are bones bleaching in the sun, showing where 
the poachers had piled the bodies of the birds as they stripped them of 
wings and feathers. In the old open guano shed were seen the remains 
of hundreds and possibly thousands of wings which were placed there 
but never cured for shipping, as the marauders were interrupted in their 
work. 



BIRD TRAGEDY ON LAYS AN ISLAND 



141 




SHED FILLED WITH WINGS OF SLAUGHTERED BIRDS ON LAYSAN ISLAND 

"An old cistern back of one of the buildings tells a story of cruelty 
that surpasses anything else done by these heartless, sanguinary pirates, 
not excepting the practice of cutting wings from living birds and leaving 
them to die of hemorrhage. In this dry cistern the living birds were kept 
by hundreds to slowly starve to death. In this way the fatty tissue 
lying next to the skin was used up, and the skin was left quite free from 
grease, so that it required little or no cleaning during preparation. 

"Many other revolting sights, such as the remains of young birds 
that had been left to starve, and birds with broken legs and deformed 
beaks were to be seen. Killing clubs, nets and other implements used by 
these marauders were lying all about. Hundreds of boxes to be used in 
shipping the bird skins were packed in an old building. It was very 
evident they intended to carry on their slaughter as long as the birds 
lasted. 

"Not only did they kill and skin the larger species but they caught 
and caged the finch, honey eater, and miller bird. Cages and material 
for making them were found." — (Report of an Expedition to Laysan 
Island in 1911. By Homer R. Dill, page 12.) 



The report of Professor Bryan contains the following pertinent para- 
graphs : 

"This wholesale killing has had an appalling effect on the colony. * * 
It is conservative to say that fully one-half the number of birds of both 



142 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

species of albatross that were so abundant everywhere in 1903 have been 
killed. The colonies that remain are in a sadly decimated condition. * * 
Over a large part of the island, in some sections a hundred acres in a place, 
that ten years ago were thickly inhabited by albatrosses not a single 
bird remains, while heaps of the slain lie as mute testimony of the awful 
slaughter of these beautiful, harmless, and without doubt beneficial 
inhabitants of the high seas. 

"While the main activity of the plume-hunters was directed against 
the albatrosses, they were by no means averse to killing anything in the 
bird line that came in their way. * * Fortunately, serious as were the 
depredations of the poachers, their operations were interrupted before 
any of the species had been completely exterminated." 

But the work of the Evil Genius of Laysan did not stop with the 
slaughter of three hundred thousand birds. Mr. Schlemmer introduced 
rabbits and guinea-pigs; and these rapidly multiplying rodents now are 
threatening to consume every plant on the island. If the plants dis- 
appear, many of the insects will go with them ; and this will mean the 
disappearance of the small insectivorous birds. 

In February, 1909, President Roosevelt issued an executive order 
creating the Hawaiian Islands Reservation for Birds. In this are in- 
cluded Laysan and twelve other islands and reefs, some of which are 
inhabited by birds that are well worth preserving. By this act, we may 
feel that for the future the birds of Laysan and neighboring islets are 
secure from further attacks by the bloody-handed agents of the vain 
women who still insist upon wearing the wings and feathers of wild birds. 



CHAPTER XV 
UNFAIR FIREARMS, AND SHOOTING ETHICS 

For considerably more than a century, the States of the American 
Union have enacted game-protective laws based on the principle that the 
wild game belongs to the People, and the people's senators, representatives 
and legislators generally may therefore enact laws for its protection, 
prescribing the manner in which it may and may not be taken and pos- 
sessed. The soundness of this principle has been fully confirmed by the 
Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Geer vs. Connecticut, 
on March 2, 1896. 

The tendency of predatory man to kill and capture wild game of all 
kinds by wholesale methods is as old as the human race. .The days of the 
club, the stone axe, the bow and arrow and the flint-lock gun were con- 
temporaneous with the days of great abundance of game. Now that the 
advent of breech-loaders, repeaters, automatics and fixed ammunition 
has rendered game scarce in all localities save a very few, the thoughtful 
man is driven to consider measures for the checking of destruction and 
the suppression of wholesale slaughter. 

First of all, the deadly floating batteries and sail-boats were pro- 
hibited. To-day a punt gun is justly regarded as a relic of barbarism, 
and any man who uses one places himself beyond the pale of decent 
sportsmanship, or even of modern pot-hunting. Strange to say, although 
the unwritten code of ethics of English sportsmen is very strict, the Eng- 
lish to this day permit wild-fowl hunting with guns of huge calibre, some 
of which are more like shot-cannons than shot-guns. And they say, 
"Well, there are still wild duck on our coast!" 

Beyond question, it is now high time for the English people to take 
up the shot-gun question, and consider what to-day is fair and unfair in 
the killing of waterfowl. The supply of British ducks and geese can not 
forever withstand the market gunners and their shot-cannons. Has not 
the British wild-fowl supply greatly decreased during the past fifteen 
years? I strongly suspect that a careful investigation would reveal the 
fact that it has diminished. The Society for the Preservation of the 
Fauna of the Empire should look into the matter, and obtain a series of 
reports on the condition of the waterfowl to-day as compared with what 
it was twenty years ago. 

In the United States we have eliminated the swivel guns, the punt 
guns and the very-big-bore guns. Among the real sportsmen the tendency 
is steadily toward shot-guns of small caHbre, especially under 12-gauge. 
But, outside the ranks of sportsmen, we are now face to face with two 
automatic and five "pump" shotguns of deadly efficiency. Of these, 



144 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 




■BRnmsm 

WINCHESTER AUTOLOADING. 5 SHOTS IN 4 SECONDS 
Loaded and cocked by it5 own recoil. 



FOUR OF THE SEVEN MACHINE GUNS 



more than one hundred thousand are being made and sold annually by 
the five companies that produce them. Recently the annual output 
has been carefully estimated from known facts to be about as follows: 

Winchester Arms Co., New Haven, Conn. 

(1 Automatic and 1 Pump-gun) 50,000 guns. 

Remington Arms Co., Ilion, N. Y. 

(1 Automatic and 1 Pump-gun) 25,000 

Marlin Fire Arms Co., New Haven, Conn. 1 Pump-gun. . . . 12,000 

Stevens Arms Co., Chicopee Falls, Mass. 1 Pump-gun 10,000 

Union Fire Arms Co., 1 Pump-gun 5,000 

103,000 guns 

The Ethics of Shooting and Shot-Guns. — Are the American people 
willing that their wild birds shall be shot by machinery? 

In the ethics of sportsmanship, the anglers of America are miles ahead 
of the men who handle the rifle and shot-gun in the hunting field. Will 
the hunters ever catch up ? 

The anglers have steadily diminished the weight of the rod and the 
size of the line ; and they have prohibited the use of gang hooks and nets. 
In this respect the initiative of the Tuna Club of Santa Catalina is worthy 
of the highest admiration. Even though the leaping tuna, the jewfish 
and the sword-fish are big and powerful, the club has elected to raise the 
standard of sportsmanship by making captures more difficult than ever 
before. A higher degree of skill, and nerve and judgment, is required in 
the angler who would make good on a big fish; and, incidentally, the fish 
has about double "the show" that it had fifteen years ago. 



UNFAIR FIREARMS AND SHOOTING ETHICS 145 

That is Sportsmanship ! 

But how is it with the men who handle the shot-gun ? 

By them, the Tuna Club's high-class principle has been exactly re- 
versed! In the making of fishing-rods, commercialism plays small part; 
but in about forty cases out of every fifty the making of guns is solely 
a matter of dollars and profits. 

Excepting the condemnation of automatic and pump guns, I think 
that few clubs of sportsmen have laid down laws designed to make 
shooting more difficult, and to give the game more of a show to escape. 
Thousands of gentlemen sportsmen have their own separate unwritten 
codes of honor, but so far as I know, few of them have been written out 
and adopted as binding rules of action. I know that among expert wing 
shots it is an unwritten law that quail and grouse must not be shot on 
the ground, nor ducks on the water. But, among the three million 
gunners who annually shoot in the United States how many, think you, 
are there who in actual practice observe any sentimental principles when 
in the presence of killable game? I should say about one man and boy 
out of every five hundred. 

Up to this time, the great mass of men who handle guns have left it 
to the gunmakers to make their codes of ethics, and hand them out with 
the loaded cartridges, all ready for use. 

For fifty years the makers of shot-guns and rifles have taxed their 
ingenuity and resources to make killing easier, especially for "amateur" 
sportsmen, — and take still greater advantages oj the game! Look at this 
scale of progression : 

Fifty Years' Increase in the Deadliness of Firearms. 

KIND OF GUN. ESTIMATED DEGREE OF DEADLINESS. 

Single-shot muzzle loader ^_ 10 

Single-shot breech-loader ^^^__ 30 

Double-barrel breech-loader ^^^^^^^^ .50 

Choke-bore breech-loader ^^^_i^^^^^^ 60 

Repeating rifle ■m^_^_h— « 60 

Repeating rifle, with silencer ^^^^i^_^^.^^^_ 70 

"Pump" shot-gun (6 shots) ^^_^_^.s_i^.^.i__ 90 

Automatic or "autoloading" shot-guns, 5 shots _.^_^....i_^^^^^^_.. 100 

The Output oJ igii. — At a recent hearing before a committee of the 
House of Representatives at Washington, a representative of the gun- 
making industry reported that in the year 1911 ten American manufac- 
turing concerns turned out the following : 

391,875 shot-guns, 

666,643 rifles, and 

580,042 revolvers. 

There are 66 factories producing firearms and ammunition, employ- 
ing $39,377,000 of invested capital and 15,000 employees. 

The sole and dominant thought of many gunmakers is to make the 
very deadliest guns that human skill can invent, sell them as fast as 



146 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

possible, and declare dividends on their stock. The Remington, Win- 
chester, Marlin, Stevens and Union Companies are engaged in a mad 
race to see who can turn out the deadliest guns, and the most of them. 
On the market to-day there are five pump-guns, that fire six shots each, 
in about six seconds, without removal from the shoulder, by the quick 
sliding of a sleeve under the barrel, that ejects the empty shell and in- 
serts a loaded one. There are two automatics that fire five shots each in 
five seconds or less, by five pulls on the trigger! The autoloading gun is 
reloaded and cocked again wholly by its own recoil. Now, if these are not 
machine guns, what are they? 

In view of the great scarcity of feathered game, and the number of 
deadly machine guns already on the market, the production of the last 
and deadliest automatic gun (by the Winchester Arms Company), 
already in great demand, is a crime against wild life, no less. 

Every human action is a matter of taste and individual honor 

It is natural for the duck-butchers of Currituck to love the automatic 
shot-guns as they do, because they kill the most ducks per flock. With 
two of them in his boat, holding ten shots, one expert duck-killer can, — 
and sometimes actually does, so it is said, — get every duck out of a flock, 
up to seven or eight. 

It is natural for an awkward and blundering wing-shot to love the 
deadliest gun, in order that he may make as good a bag as an expert shot 
can make with a double-barreled gun. It is natural for the hunter who 
does not care a rap about the extermination of species to love the gun that 
will enable him to kill up to the bag limit, every time he takes the field. 
It is natural for men who don't think, or who think in circles, to say "so 
long as I observe the lawful bag limit, what difference does it make what 
kind of a gun I use ? ' ' 

It is natural for the Remington, and Winchester, and Marlin gun- 
makers to say, as they do, " Enforce the laws ! Shorten the open seasons ! 
Reduce the bag limit, and then it won't matter what guns are used! 
But, — DON'T touch autoloading guns! Don't hamper Inventive 
Genius ! ' ' 

Is it not high time for American sportsmen to cease taking their 
moral principles and their codes of ethics from the gun-makers ? 

Here is a question that I would like to put before every hunter of 
game in America : 

In view of the alarming scarcity of game, in view of the impending 
extermination of species by legal hunting, can any high-minded sports- 
man, can any good citizen either sell a machine shot-gun or use one in 
hunting ? 

A gentleman is incapable of taking an unfair advantage of any wild 
creature; therefore a gentleman cannot use punt guns for ducks, dyna- 
mite for game fish, or automatic or pump guns in bird-shooting. The 
machine guns and "silencers" are grossly unfair, and like gang-hooks, 
nets and dynamite for trout and bass, their use in hunting must every- 



UNFAIR FIREARMS A AW SHOOTING ETHICS 



147 




THE CHAMPION liAMK bLAULfH IKK IJAbli 
One Hour's Slaughter C218 Geese) With Two Automatic Shot-Guns 



where be prohibited by law. Times have changed, and the Hnes for pro- 
tection must be more tightly drawn. 

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (Judge Orlady) has decided 
that the Pennsylvania law against the use of automatic guns in hunting 
is entirely constitutional, because every state has a right to say how its 
game may and may not be killed. 

It is up to the American People to say now whether their wild life 
shall be slaughtered by machinery, or not. 

If they are willing that it should be, then let us be consistent and say, 
— away with all "conservation!" The game conservators can endure a 
gameless and birdless continent quite as well as the average citizen can. 

How They Work. — There are a few apologists for the automatic 
and pump guns who cheerfully say, "So long as the bag limit is observed, 
what difference does it make how the birds are killed?" 

It is strange that a conscientious man should ask such a question, 
when the answer is apparent. 

We reply, " The difference is that an automatic or pump gun will kill 
fully twice as many waterfowl as a double-barrel, ij not more; and it is 
highly undesirable that every gunner should get the bag limit of birds, or any 



148 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

number near it! The birds can not stand it. Moreover, the best states for 
ducks and geese have no bag limits on those birds! To-day, on Currituck 
Sound, for example, the market hunters are kilHng all the waterfowl they 
can sell. On Marsh Island, Louisiana, one man has killed 369 ducks in 
one day, and another market gunner killed 430 in one day. 

The automatic and the ' ' pump ' ' shot-guns are the favorite weapons 
of the game-hog who makes a specialty of geese and ducks. It is no un- 
common thing for a gunner who shoots a machine gun to get, with one 
gun, as high as eight birds out of one flock. A man who has himself done 
this has told me so. 

The Champion Game-Slaughter Case. — Here is a story from California 
that is no fairy tale. It was published, most innocently, in a western 
magazine, with the illustration that appears herewith, and in which please 
notice the automatic shot-gun: 

"February 5th, I and a friend were at one of the Glenn County Club's 
camps. * * Neither of us having ever had the pleasure of shooting over 
live decoys, we were anxious, and could hardly wait for the sport to com- 
mence. On arriving at the scene we noticed holes which had been dug in 
the ground, just large enough for a man to crawl into. These holes were 
used for hiding places, and were deep enough so the sportsmen would be 
entirely out of sight of the gaine. The birds are so wild that to move a 
finger will frighten them. * * 

"The decoys are wild geese which had been crippled and tamed for 
this purpose. They are placed inside of silk net fences which are located 
on each side of the holes dug for hiding places. These nets are the color 
of the ground and it is impossible for the wild geese flying overhead to 
detect the difference. 

"After we had investigated everything the expert caller and owner 
of the outfit exclaimed: ' Into your holes!' 

"We noticed in the distance a flock of geese coming. Our caller in a 
few seconds had their attention, and they headed towards our decoys. 
Soon they were directly over us, but out of easy range of our guns. We 
were anxious to shoot, but in obedience to our boss had to keep still, and 
soon noticed that the birds were soaring around and in a short time were 
within fifteen or twenty feet of us. At that moment we heard the com- 
mand, 'Punch 'em!' and the bombardment that followed was beyond 
imagining. We had fired five shots apiece, and found we had bagged ten 
geese from this one fiock. 

"At the end of one hour's shooting we had 218 birds to our credit 
and were out of ammunition. 

"On finding that no more shells were in our pits we took our dead 
geese to the camp and returned with a new supply of ammunition. We 
remained in the pits during the entire day. When the sun had gone 
behind the mountains we summed up our kill and it amounted to 4^0 
geese! 

"The picture shown with this article gives a view of the first hour's 



UNFAIR FIREARMS AND SHOOTING ETHICS 



149 




SLAUGHTERED ACCORDING TO LAW 

A Result of a Faulty System 



Such Pictures as this are Very Common in Sportsmen's Magazines 
Note the Automatic Gun 



shoot. A photograph would have been taken of the remainder of the 
shoot, but it being warm weather the birds had to be shipped at once in 
order to keep them from spoiling. 

"Supper was then eaten, after which we were driven back to Willows; 
both agreeing that it was one of the greatest days of sport we ever had, 
and wishing that we might, through the courtesy of the Glenn County 
Goose Club, have another such day. C. H. B." 

Another picture was published in a Canadian magazine, illustrating 
a story from which I quote : 

"I fixed the decoys, hid my boat and took my position in the blind. 
My man started his work with a will and hustled the ducks out of every 
cove, inlet or piece of marsh for two miles around. I had barely time to 
slip the cartridges into my guns^ — one a double and the other a five shot 
automatic — when I saw a brace of birds coming toward me. They sailed 
in over my decoys. I rose to the occasion, and the leader up-ended and 
tumbled in among the decoys. The other bird, unable to stop quick 
enough, came directly over me. He closed his wings and struck the 
ground in the rear of the blind. 

" More and more followed. Sometimes they came singh', and then 
in twos and threes. I kept busy and attended to each bird as quickly 



150 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

as possible. Whenever there was a lull in the flight I went out in the 
boat and picked up the dead, leaving the wounded to take chances with 
any gunner lucky enough to catch them in open and smooth water. A 
bird handy in the air is worth two wounded ones in the water. Twice 
I took six dead birds out of the water for seven shots, and both guns empty. 

" The ball thus opened, the birds commenced to move in all directions. 
Until the morning's flight was over I was kept busy pumping lead, first 
with the 10, then with the automatic, reloading, picking up the dead, etc." 

And the reader will observe that the harmless, innocent, inoffensive 
automatic shot gun, that "don't matter if you enforce the bag limit," 
figures prominently in both stories and both photographs. 

A Story of Two Pump Guns and Geese: — It comes from Aberdeen, 
S. D. (Sand Lake), in the spring of 1911. Mr. J. J. Humphrey tells it, in 
Outdoor Life magazine for July, 1911. 

' ' Smith and I were about a hundred yards from them [the flock of 
Canada geese] , when Murphy scared them. They rose in a dense mass 
and came directly between Smith and me. We were about gunshot 
distance apart, and they were not over thirty feet in the air when we 
opened up on them with our pump guns and No. 5 shot. When the smoke 
cleared away and we had rounded up the cripples we found we had twenty- 
one geese. I have heard of bigger killings out in this country, but never 
positively knew of them." 

So then: those two gunners averaged loYz wild geese per pump gun out 
of one flock! And yet there are wise and reflective sportsmen who say, 
"What difference does the kind of gun make so long as you live up to 
the law?" 

I think that the pump and automatic guns make about yj per-cent 
of difference, against the game; that is all ! 

The number of shot-guns now in use in the United States is almost 
beyond belief. About six years ago a gentleman interested in the 
manufacture of such weapons informed me, and his statement has never 
been disputed, that every year about 500,000 new shot-guns were sold in 
the United States. The number of shot cartridges annually produced by 
our four great cartridge companies has been reliably estimated as follows : 

Winchester Arms Co 300,000,000 

Union Metallic Cartridge Co 250,000,000 

Peters Cartridge Co 150,000,000 

Western Cartridge Co 75,000,000 



775,000,000 

We must stop all the holes in the barrel, or eventually lose all the 
water. No group of bird-slaughterers is entitled to immunity. We will 
not "limit the bag, and enforce the laws," while we permit the makers 
and users of autoloading and pump guns to kill at will, as they demand. 

Yes ; we will ' ' limit the bag ' ' and ' ' enforce the laws ; ' ' but the machine 



National Association of Audubon Societies 



Founded 1901. Incor: 



For the Protection of Wild Birds and Animals 




Map showing (shaded) Sutes havinK 
Audubon Societies 



W'lLLIAM DUTCHER, President 
JOHN E. THAYER, Isl VlcePreslden. 
THEO. S. PALMER, M. D., 2(1 Vlce-Presldenl 
T. GILBERT PEARSON, Secrelsry 
FRANK M. CHAPMAN, Treasurer 
SAMUEL T. CARTER, Jr., Allorneir 

OFFICES 

525 Manhattan Avenue, TJew York City 

141 Broadway, 




the noo-game birds 



Feb. 26th 1906, 

My dear Mr. Hornaday:- 

It is with much surprise that I learn 
through your communication of even date that certain 
persons are claiming that the National Association of 
Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Animals and 
Birds is in favor of the use of automatic or pump guns, 
and consequently is not in favor of the passage of laws 
to prevent the use or sale of such firearms. 

I beg officially to state that the National 
Association of Audubon Societies is absolutely opposed to 
either the manufacture, sale, or use of such firearms, and 
therefore hopes that the meritorious bill introduced by 
the New York Zoological Society will become a law. 

I beg further to add that any statement con- 
trary to the above in effect is unauthorized. 

This society is working for the preservation 
of the wild birds and game of North America, and it 
sincerely should not stultify itself by advocating the use 
of one of the most potent means of destruction that has 
ever been devised. 

You are at liberty to use this communication 
either publicly or privately. 



Very aincecaly yours, 




dent. 



A LETTER THAT TELLS ITS OWN STORY 



152 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

guns and the alien shooters shall be eliminated at the same time ! Each 
state has the power to regulate, absolutely, down to the smallest detail, 
the manner in which the game of The People shall be taken or not taken ; 
and such laws are absolutely constitutional. If we can legislate punt 
guns and dynamite out of use, the machine guns and silencers can be 
treated similarly. 

No immunity jor wild-life exterminators. 

The following unprejudiced testimony from a New York business 
man who is a sportsman, with a fine game preserve of his own, should be 
of general interest. It was written to G. O. Shields, March 21, 1906. 

Dear Sir: 

Regarding the use of the automatic shot-gun, would say that I am a member of two 
southern ducking clubs where these guns are used very extensively. I have seen a flock 
of ducks come into a blind where one, two, or even three of these guns were in use, and 
have seen as many as eleven shots poured into a single flock. 

We have considerable poaching on one of these clubs, the territory being so ex- 
tensive that it is impossibe to prevent it. We own 60,000 acres, and these poachers, 
I am told, nearly all use the automatic guns. They frequently kill six or eight ducks 
out of one flock — first taking a raking shot on the water, and then getting in the balance 
of the magazine before the flock is out of range. In fact, some of them carry two guns, 
and are able to discharge a part of the second magazine into the same flock. 

As I told you the other evening, I am not so much against the gun when in the hands 
of gentlemen and real sportsmen, but, on account of its terrible possibilities for market 
hunters, I believe that the only safe way is to abolish it entirely, and that the better 
class should be willing to give up this weapon as being the only means of putting a stop 
to this willful game slaughter. 

Very truly yours, 

Arthur Robinson. 

HOW GENTLEMEN SPORTSMEN REGARD AUTOMATIC AND PUMP GUNS 

Each one of the following organizations, chiefly clubs of gentlemen 
sportsmen, have adopted strong resolutions condemning the use of auto- 
matic guns in hunting, and either requesting or recommending the 
enactment of laws against their use : 

New York Zoological Society Henry Fairfield Osborn, President 

The Camp-Fire Club of America Daniel C. Beard, President 

Boone and Crockett Club W. Austin Wadsworth, President 

New York State Fish, Game and Forest League 81 Clubs and Associations 

New York Association for the Protection of Fish and Game . . Alfred Wagstaff , President 

Lewis and Clark Club John M. Phillips, President 

League of American Sportsmen G. O. Shields, President 

Wild Life Protective Association W. T. Hornaday, President 

WHERE AUTOMATIC GUNS ARE BARRED OUT BY LAW 

Pennsylvania, 1907 British Columbia, 1911 

New Jersey, 1912 Ontario, 1907 

• Saskatchewan, 1906 Manitoba, 1909 

New Brunswick, 1907 Alberta, 1907 

PriNCE Edward Island, 1906 



UNFAIR FIREARMS AND SHOOTING ETHICS 153 

SPORTSMEN'S CLUBS WHEREIN THEY ARE BARRED BY CODES OF 
ETHICS AND RULES 

Adirondack League Club, New York Tobico Hunting Club, Kawkawlin, Mich. 

Blooming Grove Park Hunting Turtle Lake Club, Turtle Lake, Mich. 

and Fishing Club, Penn. Au Sable Forest Farm Club, Mich. 

Greenwing Gun Club, Ottawa, 111 Wallace Ducking Club, Wild Fowl Bay, 
Western Ducking Club, Detroit, Minn. Mich. 

Bolsa Chica Club, Los Angeles, Cal. Lomita Club, Los Angeles, Cal. 

Westminster Club, Los Angeles, Cal. Golden West Club, Los Angeles, Cal. 

Los Patos Club, Los Angeles, Cal. Recreation Club, Los Angeles, Cal. 
Pocahontas Club, Va. 

A MODEL BILL TO PROHIBIT THE USE OF AUTOMATIC AND REPEATING 

SHOT GUNS IN HUNTING 

Section 1. It shall be unlawful to use in hunting or shooting birds or animals of any 
kind, any automatic or repeating shot gun or pump gun, or any shot-gun holding more 
than two cartridges at one time, or that may be fired more than twice without removal 
from the shoulder for reloading. 

Section 2. Violation of any provision of this act shall be punished by a fine of not 
less than twenty-five nor more than one hundred dollars for each offence ; and the car- 
rying, or possession in the woods, or in any field, or upon any water of any gun or other 
weapon the use of which is prohibited, as aforesaid, shall be prima facie evidence of the 
violation of this act. 

The English j-barrel "Scatter Rifle," for Dvicks. — All gunners who 
find machine guns good enough for them will be delighted by the news 
that an Englishman whose identity is concealed under the initials 
"F. M. M. " has invented and manufactured a 3-barreled rifle specially 
intended to kill ducks that are beyond the reach of a choke-bore shot- 
gun. The weapon discharges all three barrels simultaneously. In the 
London Field, of Dec. 9, 1911, it is described by a writer w^ho also thought- 
fully conceals his identity under a nom-de-plume. After a trial of 48 
shots, the writer declares that "the 3-barreled is a really practicable 
weapon," and that with it one could bag wild-fowl that were quite out of 
reach of any shot-gun. Just why a Gatling gun or a Maxim should not 
be employed for the same purpose, the writer fails to state. The use of 
either would be quite as sportsmanlike, and as fair to the game. There 
are great possibilities in ducking mortars, also. 

The "Sunday Gun." — A new weapon of peculiar form and great 
deadliness to song birds, has recently come into use. Because of the 
manner of its use, it is known as the "Sunday gun." It is specially 
adapted to concealment on the person. A man could go through a recep- 
tion with one of these deadly weapons absolutely concealed under his 
dress coat ! It is a weapon with two barrels, rifle and shot ; and it enables 
the user to kill anything from a humming-bird up to a deer. What the 
shot-barrel can not kill, the rifle will. It is not a gun that any sportsman 
would own, save as a curiosity, or for target use. 

The State Ornithologist of Massachusetts, Mr. E. H. Forbush, in- 
forms me that already the "Sunday gun" has become a scourge to the 
bird life of that state. Thousands of them are used by men and boys 
who live in cities and towns, and are able to get into the country only on 



154 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Sundays. They conceal them under their coats, on Sunday mornings, 
go out into the country, and spend the day in shooting small birds and 
mammals. The dead birds are concealed in various pockets, the Sunday 
gun goes under the coat, and at nightfall the guerrilla rides back to the 
city with an innocent smile on his face, as if he had spent a day in harm- 
less enjoyment of the beauties of nature. 

The "Sunday gun" is on sale everywhere, and it is said to be in use 
both by American and Italian killers of song-birds. It weighs only two 
pounds, eight ounces, and its cost is so trifling that any guerrilla who 
wishes one can easily find the money for its purchase. There are in the 
United States at least a million men and boys quite mean enough to use 
this weapon on song-birds, swallows, woodpeckers, nuthatches, rabbits 
and squirrels, and like other criminals, hide both weapon and loot in 
their clothing. So long as this gun is in circulation, no small bird is safe,, 
at any season, near any city or town. 

Now, what are the People going to do about it ? 

My recommendation is that each state enact a law in the following 
terms : 

Be it enacted, etc. — That from and after the passage of this act it 
shall be unlawful for any person to use in hunting, or to carry concealed 
on the person, any shotgun, or rifle, or combination of shotgun and rifle, 
with a barrel or barrels less than twenty-eight inches in length, or with a 
skeleton stock fixed on a hinge. 

The carrying of any rifle or shotgun concealed on the person shall 
constitute a felony. 

The penalties for hunting with any gun specially adapted to con- 
cealment should be not less than $50 fine or two months imprisonment at 
hard labor, and the carrying of such weapons concealed should be $100 
or four months at hard labor. 

Incidentally, we wonder what will be the next devilish device for the 
destruction of wild life that American in\'entive genius will produce. 




THE "SUNDAY GUN !" 
A Deadly Combination of Concealable Rifle-and-Shot-Gun. 




THE WILDERNESS OF NORTH AMERICA (SHADED) AND THE ARCTIC 
PRAIRIES, WELL STOCKED WITH BIG GAME 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF NORTH AMERICAN BIG 

GAME 

The subject of this chapter opens up a vast field of facts and conclu- 
sions, quite broad enough to fill a whole volume. In the space at our dis- 
posal here it is possible to offer only a summary of the subject, without 
attempting to prove our statements by the production of detailed 
evidence. 

To say that all over the world, the large land mammals are being 
destroyed more rapidly than they are breeding, would not be literally 
true, for the reason that there are yet many areas that are almost un- 
touched by the destroying hand of civilized man. It is true, however, 
that all the unspoiled areas rapidly are growing fewer and smaller. It 
is also true that in all the regions of the earth that ai easily penetrable 
by civilized man, the wild life is being killed faster thai, it breeds, and of 
necessity it is disappearing. This is why the British are now so urgently 
bestirring themselves to create game preserves in all the countries that 
they own. 

It is one of the inexorable laws of Nature, to which I know of not one 
exception, that large hoofed animals which live on open plains, on open 
mountains, or in regions that are thinly forested, always are easily found 
and easily exterminated. All such animals have a weak hold on life. 
This is because it is so difficult for them to hide, and so very easy for man 
to creep up within the killing range of modern, high-power, long-range 
rifles. Is it not pitiful to think of animals like the caribou, moose, white 
sheep and bear trying to survive on the naked ridges and bald mountains 
of Yukon Territory and Alaska ! With a modern rifle, the greatest duffer 
on earth can creep up within killing distance of any of the big game of the 
North. 

The gray wolf is practically the only large animal that is able to hide 
successfully and survive in the treeless regions of the North; but his 
room is always preferable to his company, because he, too, is a destroyer 
of big game. 

I am tempted to try to map out roughly what are to-day the un- 
opened and undestroyed wild haunts of big game in North America. 
In doing this, however, I warn the reader not to be deceived into think- 
ing that because game still exists in those regions, those areas therefore 
constitute a permanent preserve and safe breeding-ground for large 
mammals. That is very, very far from being the case. The further 
"opening up " of the wilderness areas, as I shall call them for convenience, 



THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF BIG GAME 157 

can and surely will quickly wipe out their big game; for throughout nine- 
tenths of those areas it holds to life by very slender threads. 

To-day the unopened and undestroyed wilderness areas of North 
America, wherein large mammals still live in a normal wild state, are in 
general as follows : 

The Arctic Barren Grounds, or Arctic Prairies, north of the limit 
of tre-'^, embracing the Barren Grounds of northern Canada, the great 
arcti. archipelago, Ellesmere, Melville and Grant Lands and Greenland. 
This region is the home of the musk-ox and three species of arctic caribou. 

The Alaska-Yukon Region, inhabited by the moose, white motmtain 
sheep, mountain goat, four species of caribou, and half a dozen species 
of Alaska brown, grizzly and black bears. 

Northern Ontario, Quebec, Labrador and Newfoundland, 
inhabited by moose, woodland caribou, white-tailed deer and black bear. 

British Columbia, inhabited by a magnificent big-game fauna 
embracing the moose, elk, caribou of two species, white sheep, black 
sheep, big-horn sheep, mule deer, white-tailed deer, mountain goat, 
grizzly, black and inland white bears. 

The Sierra Madre of Mexico, containing jaguar, puma, grizzly 
and black bears, mule deer, white-tailed deer, antelope, mountain sheep 
and peccaries. 

I have necessarily omitted all those regions of the United States and 
Canada that still contain a remnant of big game, but have been literally 
"shot to pieces" by gunners. 

In the United States and southern Canada there are about fifteen 
localities which contain a supply of big game sufficient that a conscien- 
tious sportsman might therein hunt and kill one head per year with a 
clear conscience. All others should be closed for five years! Here is the. 
list of availables ; and regarding it there will be about as many opinions 
as there are big-game sportsmen : 

HUNTING GROUNDS IN AND NEAR THE UNITED STATES AND 

SOUTHERN CANADA WHEREIN IT IS RIGHT TO 

HUNT BIG GAME 

The Maine Woods: Well stocked with white-tailed deer. 

New Brunswick: Well stocked with moose; a few caribou, deer and 
black bear. 

White Mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont: For deer. 

The Adirondacks, New York : Well stocked with white-tailed deer, 
only. 

Pennsylvania Mountains: Contain many deer and black bears, 
and soon will contain more. 

Northern Minnesota: Deer and moose. 

Northern Michigan and Wisconsin: White-tailed deer. 



158 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Northwestern Wyoming: Thousands of elk in fall and winter; a 
few deer, grizzly and black bears, but no sheep that it would be right 
to kill. 

Western and Southwestern Montana: Elk in season, mule and 
white-tail deer; no sheep that it would be right to kill. 

Northwestern Montana : Mule and white-tailed deer, only. No 
sheep, bear, moose, elk or antelope to kill! 

Wyoming, East of Yellowstone Park: A few elk, by m. - ation 
from the Park; a few deer, and bear of two species. 

Northern Woods of Ontario and Quebec: Moose; deer. 

Southern British Columbia: Goat, a few sheep and deer; grizzly 
bear. Moose, caribou and elk should not be killed. 

Northern British Columbia: Six fine species of big game. 

Northwestern Alberta : Grizzly bear, big-horn and mountain goat. 

Under existing conditions I regard the above-named hunting grounds 
as nearly all in which it is right or fair for big-game hunting now to be 
permitted, even on a strict basis. Nearly all others should immediately 
be closed, for large game, for ten years. 

Of course such a proceeding, if carried into effect, would provoke loud 
protests from sportsmen, gunners, game-hogs, pot-hunters and others; 
but I only wish to high heaven that we had the power to carry such a 
program as that into effect ! Then we would see some game in ten years; 
and our grand-children would thank us for some real big-game protection 
at a critical period. 

Except in the few localities above-mentioned, I regard the big-game 
situation in the United States and southern Canada as particularly des- 
perate. Unless there is an immediate and complete revolution in this 
country from an era of slaughter to an era of preservation, as sure as the 
sun rises on the morrow, outside of the hard and fast game preserves, 
and places like Maine and the Adirondacks, this generation of Americans 
and near-Americans will live to see our country swept clean of big game! 

Two years ago, I did not believe this ; but I do now. It is impossible 
to exaggerate the wide extent or the seriousness of this situation. In a 
country where any and every individual can rise and bluster, "I'm- 
ju3t-a3-good-as->'0M-are," and bellow for his "rights" as a "tax-payer," 
there is no stopping the millions who kill whenever there is an open season. 
And to many Americans, no right is dearer than the right to kill the game 
which by even the commonest law of equity belongs, not to the shooter ex- 
clusively, but partly to two thousand other persons who don't shoot at all ! 

Unless we come to an "About, face! " in quick time, all our big game 
outside the preserves is doomed to sure and quick extermination. This 
is not an individual opinion, merely: it is b, fact; and a hundred thousand 
men know it to be such. 

Last winter (1911-12), because the deer of Montana v/ere driven by cold 
and hunger out of the mountains and far down into the ranchmen's val- 



THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF BIG GAME \159 

leys, eleven thousand of them were ruthlessly slaughtered. State Game 
Warden Avare says that often heads of families took out as many licenses 
as there were persons in the family, and the whole quota was killed. 
Such people deserve to go deerless into the future; but we can not allow 
them to rob innocent people. 

OUR SPECIES OF BIG GAME 

The Prong-Horned Antelope, unique and wonderful, will be one 
of the first species of North American big game to become totally extinct. We 
may see this come to pass within twenty years. They can not be bred in 
protection, save in very large fenced ranges. They are delicate, capricious, 
and easily upset. They die literally "at the drop of a hat." They are 
quite subject to actinomycosis (lumpy-jaw), which in wild animals is 
incurable. 

Already all the states that possess wild antelope, except Nevada, have 
passed laws giving that species long close seasons ; which is highly credit- 
able to the states that have done their duty. Nevada must get in line 
at the next session of her legislature ! 

In 1908, Dr. T. S. Palmer published in his annual report of "Progress 
in Game Protection " the following in regard to the prong-horned antelope : 

' ' Antelope are still found in diminished numbers in fourteen western 
states. A considerable number were killed during the year in Montana, 
where the species seems to have suffered more than elsewhere since the 
season was opened in 1907. 

"A striking illustration of the decrease of the antelope is afforded by 
Colorado. In 1898 the State Warden estimated that there were 25,000 
in the state, whereas in 1908 the Game Commissioner places the number 
at only 2,000. The total number of antelope now in the United States 
probably does not exceed 17,000, distributed approximately as follows: 

Colorado 2,000 Yellowstone Park 2,000 

Idaho 200 Other States 2,000 

Montana 4,000 



New Mexico 1,300 Saskatchewan 2,000 

Oregon 1,500 

Wyoming 4,000 19,000 

To-day (1912), Dr. Palmer says the total number of antelope is less 
than it was in 1908, and in spite of protection the number is steadily 
diminishing. This is indeed serious news. The existing bands, already 
small, are steadily growing smaller. The antelope are killed lawlessl3^ 
and the crimes of such slaughter are, in nearly every instance, success- 
fully concealed. 

Previously, we have based strong hopes for the preservation of the 
antelope species on the herd in the Yellowstone Park, but those animals 
are vanishing fearfully fast. In 1906, Dr. Palmer reported that "About 
fifteen hundred antelope came down to the feeding grounds near the 
haystacks in the vicinity of Gardiner." In 1908 the Yellowstone Park 



160 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 




PRONG-HORNED ANTELOPE 



was credited with two thousand head. To-day, the number alive, by 
actual count, is only five hundred head ; and this after twenty-five years 
of protection! Where have the others gone? This shows, alas! that 
perpetual close seasons can not always bring back the vanished thousands 
of game I 

Here is a reHable report (June 29, 1912) regarding the prong-horned 
antelope in Lower California, from E. W. Nelson: "Antelope formerly 
ranged over nearly the entire length of Lower California, but are now 
gone from a large part of their ancient range, and their steadily decreasing 
numbers indicate their early extinction throughout the peninsula." 

In captivity the antelope is exasperatingly delicate and short-lived. 
It has about as much stamina as a pet monkey. As an exhibition animal 
in zoological gardens and parks it is a failure; for it always looks faded, 
spiritless and dead, like a stuffed animal ready to be thrown into the 
discard. Zoologists can not save the prong-horn species save at long 
range, in preserves so huge that the sensitive little beast will not even 
suspect that it is confined. 

Two serious attempts have been made to transplant and acclimatize 
the antelope — in the Wichita National Bison Range, in Oklahoma, and 



THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF BIG GAME 161 

in the Montana Bison Range, at Ravalli. In 1911 the Boone and Crockett- 
Club provided a fund which defrayed the expenses of shipping from the 
Yellowstone Park a small nucleus herd to each of those ranges. Eight 
were sent to the Wichita Range, of which five arrived alive. Of the seven 
sent to the Montana Range, four arrived alive and were duly set free. 
While it seems a pity to take specimens from the Yellowstone Park herd, 
the disagreeable fact is that there is no other source on which to draw 
for breeding stock. 

The Provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, in Canada, still permit 
the hunting and killing of antelope; which is wholly and entirely wrong. 

The Big-Horn Sheep. — Of North American big game, the big-horn 
of the Rockies will be, after the antelope, the next species to become 
extinct outside of protected areas. In the United States that event is 
fast approaching. It is far nearer than even the big-game sportsmen 
rea-lize. There are to-day only two localities in the four states that still 
think they have killable sheep, in which it is worth while to go sheep- 
hunting. One is in Montana, and the other is in Wyoming. In the United 
States a really big, creditable ram may now be regarded as an impossi- 
bility. There are now perhaps half a dozen guides who can find killable 
sheep in our country, but the game is nearly always young rams, under 
live years of age. 

That Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington still continue to 
permit sheep slaughter is outrageous. Their answer is that " The sports- 
men won't stand for stopping it altogether." I will add: — and the great 
mass of peeople are too criminally indifferent to take a hand in the 
matter, and do their duty regardless of the men of blood. 

The seed stock of big-horn sheep now alive in the United States 
aggregates a pitifully small number. After twenty-five years of unbroken 
protection in Colorado, Dillon Wallace estimates, after an investigation 
on the ground, that the state possesses perhaps thirty-five hundred head. 
He credits Montana and Wyoming with five hundred each — which I 
think is far too liberal a number. I do not believe that either of those 
states contains more than one hundred unprotected sheep, at the very 
utmost limit. If there are more, where are they? 

In the Yellowstone Park there are 210 head, safe and sound, and 
slowly increasing. I can not understand why they have not increased 
more rapidly than they have. In Glacier Park, now under permanent 
protection, three guides on Lake McDonald, in 1910, estimated the num- 
ber of sheep at seven hundred. Idaho has in her rugged Bitter Root and 
Clearwater Mountains and elsewhere, a remnant of possibly two hundred 
sheep, and Washington has only what chemists call "a trace." It has 
recently been discovered that California still contains a few sheep, and 
in southwestern Nevada there are a few more. 

In Utah, the big-horn species is probably quite extinct. In Ar- 
izona, there are a few very small bands, very widely scattered. They 
are in the Santa Catalina Mountains, the Grand Canyon country, the 
Gila Range, and the Quitovaquita Mountains, near Sonoyta. But who 



Itj2 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

can protect from slaughter those Arizona sheep? Absolutely no one? 
They are too few and too widely scattered for the game wardens to keep 
in touch with them. The "prospectors" have them entirely at their 
mercy, and the world well knows what prospectors' "mercy" to edible 
big game looks like on the ground. It leads straight to the frying-pan, 
the coyotes and the vultures. 

The Lower California peninsula contains about five hundred moun- 
tain sheep, without the slightest protection save low, desert mountains, 
heat and thirst. But that is no real protection whatever. Those sheep 
are too fine to be butchered the way they have been, and now are being, 
butchered. In 1908 I strongly called the attention of the Mexican Gov- 
ernment to the situation; and the Department© de Fomento secured the 
issue of an executive order forbidding the hunting of any big game in 
Lower California without the written authority of the government. I 
am sure, however, that owing to the political and military upheaval 
it never stopped the slaughter of sheep. In such easy mountains as those 
of Lower California, it is a simple matter to exterminate quickly all the 
mountain sheep that they possess. The time for President Madero 
and his cabinet to inaugurate serious protective measures has full}' 
arrived. 

Both British Columbia and Alberta have even yet fine herds of big- 
horn, and we can count three large game preserves in which they are 
protected. They are Goat Mountain Park (East Kootenay district, be- 
tween the Elk and Bull Rivers) ; the Rocky Mountains Park, near 
Banff, and Waterton Lakes Park, in the southwestern corner of Alberta. 

In view of the number of men who desire to hunt them, the bag limit 
on big-horn rams in British Columbia and Alberta still is too liberal, by 
half. One ram per year for one man is quite enough; quite as much so 
as one moose is the limit everywhere. To-day "a big, old ram" is 
regarded by sportsmen as a much more desirable and creditable trophy 
than a moose; because moose-killing is easy, and the bagging of an old 
mountain ram in real mountains requires five times as much effort and 
skill. 

The splendid high and rugged mountains of British Columbia and 
Alberta form an ideal home for the big-horn (and mountain goat), and it 
would be an international calamity for that region to be denuded of its 
splendid big game. With resolute intent and judicial treatment that 
region can remain a rich and valuable hunting ground for five hundred 
years to come. Under falsely "liberal" laws, it can be shot into a state 
of complete desolation within ten years, or even less. 

Other Mountain Sheep. — In northern British Columbia, north of 
Iskoot Lake, there lies a tremendous region, extending to the Arctic 
Ocean, and comprehending the whole area between the Rocky Mountain 
continental divide and the waters of the Pacific. Over the southern end 
of this great wilderness ranges the black mountain sheep, and throtighoul 
the remainder, with many sheepless intervals, is scattered the white 
mountain sheep. 



THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF BIG GAME 163 

Owing to the immensity of this wilderness, the well-nigh total lack 
of railroads and also of navigable waters, excepting the Yukon, it will 
not be thoroughly "opened up" for a quarter of a century. The few 
resolute and pneumonia-proof sportsmen who can wade into the country, 
pulling boats through icy-cold mountain streams, are not going to de- 
vastate those millions of mountains of their big game. The few head of 
game which sportsmen can and will take out of the great northwestern 
wilderness during the next twenty-five years will hardly be missed from 
the grand total, even though a few easily-accessible localities are shot 
out. It is the deadly resident trappers, hunters and prospectors who 
mus:t be feared! And again, — who can control them? Can any wilder- 
ness government on earth make it possible"" Therefore, in time, even the 
great wilderness will be denuded of big game. This is absolutely fixed and 
certain; for within much less than another century, every square rod of 
it will have been gone over by prospectors, lumbermen, trappers and 
skin-hunters, and raked again and again with fine-toothed combs. A 
railway line to Dawson, the Copper River and Cook Inlet is to-day merely 
the next thing to expect, after Canada's present railway program has 
been wrought out. 

Yes, indeed! In time the wilderness will be opened up, and the big 
game will all be shot out, save from the protected areas. 

The Mountain Goat. — Even yet, this species is not wholly extinct 
in the United States. It survives in Glacier Park, Montana, and the 
number estimated in that region by three guide friends is too astound - 
ingly large to mention. 

This animal is much inore easily killed than the big-horn. Its white 
coat renders it fatally conspicuous at long range during the best hunting 
season; it is almost devoid of fear, and it takes altogether too many 
chances on man. Thanks to the rage for sheep horns, the average sports- 
man's view-point regarding wild life ranks a goat head about six contours 
below "old ram " heads, in desirability. Furthermore, most guides regard 
the flesh of the goat as almost unfit for use as food, and far inferior to 
that of the big-horn. These reasons, taken together, render the goats 
much less persecuted by the sportsmen, ranchmen and prospectors who 
enter the home of the two species. It was because of this indifference 
toward goats that in 1905 Mr. John M. Phillips and his party saw 243 
goats in thirty days in Goat Mountain Park, and only fourteen sheep. 

Unless the preferences of western sportsmen and gunners change very 
considerably, the coast mountains of the great northwestern wilderness 
will remain stocked with wild mountain goats until long after the last 
big-horn has been shot to death. Fortunately, the skin of the mountain 
goat has no commercial value. I think it was in 1887 that I purchased, 
in Denver, 150 nicely tanned skins of our wild white goat at fifty cents 
each! They were wanted for the first exhibit ever made to illustrate the 
extermination of American large mammals, and they were shown at the 
Louisville Exposition. It must have cost the price of those skins to tan 
them ; and I was pleased to know that some one lost money on the venture. 



164 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 




MAP OF THE FORMER AND EXISTING RANGES OF THE AMERICAN ELK 
From "Life History of Northern Animals," Copyright 1909 by E. T. Seton 

At present the mountain goat extends from north-western Montana 
to the head of Cook Inlet, but it is not found in the interior or in the Yukon 
valley. Whenever man decides that the species has lived long enough, 
he can quickly and easily exterminate it. It is one of the most picturesque 
and interesting wild animals on this continent, and there is not the 
slightest excuse for shooting it, save as a specimen of natural history. 
Like the antelope, it is so unique as a natural curiosity that it deserves 
to be taken out of the ranks of animals that are regularly pursued as 
game. 

The Elk —The story of the progressive extermination of the Ameri- 
can elk, or wapiti, covers practically the same territory as the tragedy of 
the American bison — one-third of the mainland of North America. The 
former range of the elk covered absolutely the garden ground of our 
continent, omitting the arid region. Its boundary extended from central 
Massachusetts to northern Georgia, southern Illinois, northern Texas 
and central New Mexico, central Arizona, the whole Rocky Mountain 
region up to the Peace River, and Manitoba. It skipped the arid country 
west of the Rockies, but it embraced practically the whole Pacific slope 
from central California to the north end of Vancouver Island. Mr. Seton 



THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF BIG GAME 



165 



roughly calculated the former range of canadensis at two and a half 
million square miles, and adds: "We are safe, therefore, in believing that 
in those days there may have been ten million head." 

The range of the elk covered a magnificent domain. The map pre- 
pared by Mr. Ernest T. Seton, after twenty years of research, is the 
last word on the subject. It appears on page 43, Vol. I, of his great work, 
"Life Histories of Northern Animals," and I have the permission of 
author and publisher to reproduce it here, as an object lesson in wild- 
animal extermination. Mr. Seton recognizes (for convenience, only?) 
four forms of American elk, two of which, C. nannodes and occidentalism 
still exist on the Pacific Coast. The fourth, Cervus merriami, was un- 
doubtedly a valid species. It lived in Arizona and New Mexico, but 
became totally extinct near the beginning of the present century. 

In 1909 Mr. Seton published in the work referred to above a remark- 
ably close estimate of the number of elk then alive in North America. 
Recently, a rough count — the first ever made — of the elk in and around 
the Yellowstone Park, revealed the real number of that largest contingent. 
By taking those results, and Mr. Seton's figures for elk outside the 
United States, we obtain the following very close approximation of the 
wild elk alive in North America in 1912: 



Locality Number 

Yellowstone Park and vicinity 47,000 

Idaho (permanently) , 600 

Washington 1,200 

Oregon 500 

California 400 

New York, Adirondacks 400 

Minnesota 50 

Vancouver Island 2,000 

British Columbia (S.-E.) 200 

Alberta 1,000 

Saskatchewan 500 

In various Parks and Zoos 1,000 

Total, for all America. 54,850 



Authority 
U. S. Biological Survey. 

Game Warden Chris. Morgenroth. 



State Conservation Commission. 

E. T. Seton. 

E. T. Seton. 

E. T. Seton. 

E. T. Seton. 

E. T. Seton 

E. T. Seton. 



In 1905, a herd of twenty of the so-called dwarf elk of the San Joaquin 
Valley, California, were taken to the Sequoia National Park, and placed 
in a fenced range that had been established for it on the Kaweah River. 

The extermination of the wapiti began with the settlement of the 
American colonies. Naturally, the largest animals were the ones most 
eagerly sought by the meat-hungry pioneers, and the elk and bison were 
the first game species to disappear. The colonists believed in the survival 
of the fittest, and we are glad that they did. The one thing that a hungry 
pioneer cannot withstand is — temptation — in a form that embraces five 
hundred pounds of succulent flesh. And let it not be supposed that in 
the eastern states there were only a few elk. The Pennsylvania salt licks 
were crowded with them, and the early writers describe them as existing 
in "immense bands" and "great numbers." 



166 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Of course it is impossible for wild animals of great size to exist in coun- 
tries that are covered with farms, villages and people. Under such con- 
ditions the wild and the tame cannot harmonize. It is a fact, however, 
that elk could exist and thrive in every national forest and national park 
in our country, and also on uncountable hundreds of thousands of rough, 
wild, tiinbcred hills and mountains such as exist in probably twenty-five 
different states. There is no reason, except man's short-sighted greed 
and foolishness, why there are not to-day one hundred thousand elk living 
in the Allegheny Mountains, furnishing each year fifty thousand three- 
year-old males as free food for the people. 

The trouble is, — the greedy habitants could not be induced to kill only 
the three-year-old-males, in the fall, and let the cows, calves and breeding 
bulls alone! By sensible management the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra 
Nevadas and the Coast Range would support enough wild elk to feed a 
million people. But we Americans seem utterly incapable of maintaining 
an^^ where from decade to decade a large and really valuable supply of 
wild game. Outside the Yellowstone Park and northwestern Wyoming, 
the American elk exists only in small bands — mere remnants and samples 
of the millions we could and should have. 

If they could be protected, and the surplus presently killed according 
to some rational, working system, then every national forest in the United 
States should he stocked ivith elk! In view of the awful cost of beef (to- 
day 10>2 cents per pound in Chicago on the hoof!), it is high time that 
we should consider the raising of game on the public domain on such 
lines that it would form a valuable food supply without diminishing the 
value of the forests. 

Just now (1912) the American people are sorely puzzled by a remark- 
able elk problem that each winter is presented for solution in the Jackson 
Hole country, Wyoming. Driven southward by the deep snows of winter, 
the elk thousands that in summer graze and grow fat in the Yellowstone 
Park march down into Jackson Hole, to find in those valleys less snow 
and more food. Now, it happens that the best and most of the former 
winter grazing grounds of the elk are covered by fenced ranches! As a 
result, the elk that strive to winter there, about fifteen thousand head, 
are each winter threatened with starvation; and during three or four 
winters of recent date, an aggregate of several thousand calves, weak 
yearlings and weakened cows perished of hunger. The winters of 1908, 
1909 and 1910 were progressivelv more and more severe; and 1911 saw 
about 2500 deaths, (S. N. Lcek)^ 

In 1909-10, the State of Wyoming spent $7,000 for hay, and fed it to 
the starving elk. In 1911, Wyoming spent $5,000 more, and appealed to 
Congress for help. Thanks to the efforts of Senator Lodge and others, 
Congress instantly responded with a splendid emergency appropriation 
of $20,000, partly for the purpose of feeding the elk, and also to meet the 
cost of transporting elsewhere as many of the elk as it might seem best 
to move. The starving of the elk ceased with 1911. 

Outdoor Life magazine (Denver, Colo.) for August, 1912, contains an 



THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF BIG GAME 



167 



excel ent article by Dr. W. B. Shore, entitled, "Trapping and Shipping 
Elk." I wish I could reprint it entire, for the solid information that it 
contains. It gives a clear and comprehensive account of last spring's 
operations by the Government and by the state of Montana in cap- 
turing and shipping elk from the Yellowstone Park herd, for the double 
purpose of diminishing the elk surplus in the Park and stocking vacant 
ranges elsewhere. 

The operations were conducted on the same basis as the shipping of 
cattle — the corral, the chute, the open car, and the car-load in bulk. 
Dr. Shore states that the undertaking was really no more difficult than 
the shipping of range cattle; but the presence of a considerable propor- 
tion of young and tender calves, such as are never handled with beef 
cattle, led to 8.8 per cent of deaths in transit. The deaths and the per- 
centage are nothing at which to be surprised, when it is remembered, 
that the animals had just come through a hard winter, and their natural 
vitality was at the lowest point of the year. 

The following is a condensed summary of the results of the work : 



Destination 


Numberof 
Elk 


Hours on 
Road 


Killed or 
Died in Car 


Died After 
Unloading 


1 Car. 
1 " 


Startup, Washington 

Hamilton, Montana 

Thompson Falls, Montana .... 

Stephensville, Montana 

Deer Lodge, Montana 

Hamilton, Montana 


60 : calves, 
yearlings 
and two- 
year olds 
43: cows & 
calves 

40 

36 

40 

40 

46 


94 
30 

24 

4 days; un- 
loaded & 
fed twice 


11 

4 

2 

1 
2 


7 


7 

1 


1 






Mt. Vernon, Washington 







305 


27 


9 



The total deaths in transit and after, of 36 elk out of 305, amounted to 1 1.4 per cent. 
All those shipped to Montana points were shipped by the state of Montana. 

In order to provide adequate winter grazing grounds for the Yellow- 
stone-Wyoming elk, it seems imperative that the national government 
should expend between $30,000 and $40,000 in buying back from ranch- 
men certain areas in the Jackson valley, particularly a tract known as 
"the swamp," and others on the surrounding foothills where the herds 
annually go to graze in winter. A measure to render this possible was 
presented to Congress in the winter of 1912, and without opposition an 
appropriation of $45,000 was made. 

The splendid photographs of the elk herds that recently have been 
made by S. N. Leek, of Jackson Hole, clearly reveal the fact that the 



I<i8 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 




HUNGRY ELK IN JACKSON HOLE. WYOMING 
Part of a Herd of About 2,503 Head, being fed on hay, in the Winter of 1910-11 
Note the Absence of Adult Bulls. Copyright, 1911, by S. N. Leek 

herds now consist chiefly of cows, calves, yearHngs and young bulls with 
small antlers. In one photograph showing about twenty-five hundred 
elk, there are not visible even half a dozen pairs of antlers that belong to 
adult bulls. There should be a hundred! This condition means that the 
best bulls, with the finest heads, are constantly being ::elected and killed 
by sportsmen and others who want their heads; and the young, imma- 
ture bulls are left to do the breeding that alone will sustain the species. 

It is a well-known principle in stock-breeding that sires should be 
fully adult, of maximum strength, and in the prime of life. No stock- 
breeder in his senses ever thinks of breeding from a youthful, immature 
sire. The result would be weak offspring not up to the standard. 

This inexorable law of inheritance and transmission is just as much 
a law for the elk, moose and deer of North America as it is for domestic 
cattle and horses. If the present conditions in the Wyoming elk herds 
continue to prevail for several generations, as sure as time goes on we 
shall see a marked deterioration in the size and antlers of the elk. 

If the foundation principles of stock-breeding are correct, then it is im- 
possible to maintain any large-mammal species at its zenith of size, 
strength and virility by continuous breeding of the young and imma- 
ture males. By some sportsmen it is believed that through long-con- 
tinued killing of the finest and largest males, the red deer of Europe 
have been growing smaller; but on that point I am not prepared to 
offer evidence. 



THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF BIG GAME 169 

In regard to the in-breeding of the elk herds in large open parks and 
preserves throughout North America, there are positively no ill effects 
to fear. Wild animals that are closely confined generation after generation 
are bound to deteriorate physically; but with healthy wild animals liv- 
ing in large open ranges, feeding and breeding naturally, the in-breed- 
ing that occurs produces no deterioration. 

In the twin certainties of over-population, and deterioration from 
excessive killing of the good sires, we have to face two new problems of 
very decided importance. Nothing short of very radical measures will 
provide a remedy. For the immediate future, I can offer a solution. 
While it seems almost impossible deliberately to kill females, I think that 
the present is a very exceptional case, and one that compels us to apply 
the painful remedy that I now propose. 

Premises: 1. — There are at present too many breeding cows in the 
Yellowstone herds. 
2.— There are far too few good breeding bulls. 

Conclusion: — For five years, entirely prohibit the killing of adult 
male elk, and kill only females, and young males. This would gradually 
diminish the number of calves born each year, by about 2,500, and by 
the end of five years it would reduce the number, and the annual birth, 
of females to a figure sufficiently limited that the herds could be main- 
tained on existing ranges. 

Corollary. — At the end of five years, stop killing females, and kill 
only young males. This plan would permit a large number of bull elk 
to mature; and then the largest and strongest animals would do the 
breeding, — just as Nature always intends shall be done. 

South America 

Of all the big-game regions of the earth. South America is the poorest. 
Of hoofed game she possesses only a dozen species that are worth the 
attention of sportsmen; and like all other animal life in that land of 
little game, they are desperately hard to find. In South America you 
must work your heart out in order to get either game or specimens that 
will be worth showing. 

At present, we need not worry about the marsh deer, the pampas 
deer, the guemal, or the venado, nor the tapir, jaguar, ocelot and bears. 
All these species are abundantly able to take care of themselves; and to 
find and kill any one of them is a man's task. In Patagonia the natives 
do wastefully slaughter the guanacos; and there are times also when 
great numbers of guanacos come down in winter to certain mountain 
lakes, presumably in search of food, and perish by hundreds through 
starvation. (H. Hesketh Prichard.) 

Mexico 

About ten years more will see the extinction of the mountain sheep 
of Lower California,— in the wake of the recently exterminated Mexican 



170 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

sheep of the Santa Maria Lakes region. In 1908, I solemnly warned the 
government of President Diaz, and at that time the Mexican government 
expressed much concern. 

It is a great pity that just now political conditions are completely 
estopping wild-life protection in Mexico; but it is true. If the code of 
proposed laws that I drew up (by request) in 1908 and submitted to 
Minister Molina were adopted, it would have a good effect on the fauna 
of Mexico. 

In Mexico there is little hoofed game to kill, — deer of the white-tail 
groups, seven or eight species; the desert mule deer; the brocket; the 
prong-horned antelope, the mountain sheep and the peccary. The deer 
will not so easily be exterminated, but the antelope and sheep will be 
utterly destroyed. They will be the first to go ; and I think they can not 
by any possibility last longer than ten years. Is it not too bad that Mexico 
should permit her finest species of hoofed and horned game to be oblit- 
erated before she awakens to the desirability of conservation! The 
Mexicans could protect their small stock of big game if they would ; but 
in Lower California they are leasing huge tracts of land to cattle com- 
panies, and they permit the lessees to kill all the wild game they please 
on their leased lands, even with the aid of dogs. This is a vicious and 
fatal system, and contrary to all the laws of nations. 



CHAPTER XVII 

PRESENT AND FUTURE OF NORTH AMERICAN BIG GAME 

(Concluded) 

The White-tailed Deer. — Five hundred years hence, when the 
greed and rapacity of "civilized" man has completed the loot and ruin 
of the continent of North America, the white-tailed deer will be the last 
species of our big game to be exterminated. Its mental traits, its size, 
its color and its habits all combine to render it the most persistent of 
our large animals, and the best fitted to survive. It neither bawls nor 
bugles to attract its enemies, it can not be called to a sportsman, like 
the moose, and it sticks to its timber with rare and commendable close- 
ness. When it sees a strange living thing walking erect, it does not stop 
to stare and catch soft-nosed bullets, but dashes away in quest of solitude. 

The worst shooting that I ever did or saw done at game was at 
running white-tailed deer, in the Montana river bottoms. 

For the reasons given, the white-tail exists and persists in a hundred 
United States localities from which all other big game save the black 
bear have been exterminated. For example, in our Adirondacks the moose 
were exterminated years and years ago, but the beloved wilderness called 
the "North Woods" still is populated by about 20,000 deer, and about 
8,000 are killed annually. The deer of Maine are sufficiently numerous 
that in 1909 a total of 15,879 were killed. With some assistance from 
the thin sprinkling of moose and caribou, the deer of Maine annually 
draw into that state, for permanent dedication, a huge sum of money, 
variously estimated at from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000. In spite of heavy 
slaughter, and vigorous attempts at extermination by over-shooting, 
the deer of northern Michigan obstinately refuse to be wiped out. 

There is, however, a large group of states in which this species has 
been exterminated. The states comprising it are Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, 
Iowa, and adjacent portions of seven other states. 

As if to shame the people of Iowa, a curious deer episode is recorded. 
In 1885, W. B. Cupp3^ of Avoca, Iowa, purchased five deer, and placed 
them in a paddock on his 600-acre farm. By 1900 they had increased 
to 32 head; and then one night some one kindly opened the gate of their 
enclosure, and gave them the freedom of the city. Mr. Cuppy made no 
effort to capture them, possibly because they decided to annex his farm 
as their habitat. When a neighbor led them with a bait of corn to their 
owner's door, he declined to impound them, on the ground that it was 
unnecessary. 



172 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 



By 1912, those deer had increased to 400, and the portion of this story 
that no one will believe is this: they spread all through the suburbs 
and hinterland farms of Avoca, and the people not only failed to assas- 
sinate all of them and eat them, but they actually killed only a few, protected 
the rest, and made pets of many! Queer people, those men and boys of 
Avoca. Nearly everywhere else in the world that I know, that history 
would have been ended differently. Here in the East, 90 per cent of 
our people are like the Avocans, but the other 10 per cent think only of 
slaying and eating, sans mercy, sans decency, sans law. Now the State 
of Iowa has taken hold, to capture some of those deer, and set them free 
in other portions of the state. 

Elsewhere I shall note the quick and thorough success with which 
the white-tailed deer has been brought back in Vermont, Massachusetts, 
Connecticut, and southern New York. 

No state having waste lands covered with brush or timber need be 
without the ubiquitous white-tailed deer. Give them a semblance of a 
fair show, and they will live and breed with surprising fecundity and 
persistence. If you start a park herd with ten does, soon you will have 
more deer than you will know how to dispose of, unless you market them 
under a Bayne law, duly tagged by the state. In close confinement this 
species fares rather poorly. In large preserves it does well, but during 
the rutting season the bucks are to be dreaded; and those that develop 
aggressive traits should be shot and marketed. This is the only way in 
which the deer parks of England are kept safe for unarmed people. 

Dr. T. S. Palmer has taken much pains to ascertain the number of 
deer killed in the eastern United States. His records, as published in 
May, 1910, are as follows: 



State 


1908 


1909 


1910 


State 


1908 


1909 


1910 


Maine 


15,000 

(a) 
2,700 
6,000 

500 

9,076 

11,000 

6,000 

107 

16 


15,879 

(a) 

4,736 

9,000 

(a) 

500 

6,641 

6,000 

6,000 

51 

13 


15,000 

(a) 

3,649 

9,000 

120 

800 

13,347 

6,000 

3,147 

49 

6 


Virginia 

North Carolina . 
South Carolina . 

Georgia 

Florida 

Alabama 

Mississippi 

Louisiana 

Massachusetts. . 

Total .... 


207 

(a) 

1,000 

(a) 

2,209 

152 

411 

5,500 


210 

(a) 

(a) 

367 

2,021 

148 

458 

5,470 


224 


New Hampshire . 

Vermont 

New York 

New Jersey 

Pennsylvania. . . . 

Michigan 

Wisconsin 

Minnesota 

West Virginia. . . . 
Maryland 


(a) 

(a) 

369 

1,526 

132 

500 

5,000 

1,281 


59,878 


57,494 


60,150 



(a) No statistics available. 

At this date deer hunting is not permitted at any time in In- 
diana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas, — where there are no wild 
deer; nor in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, Tennessee or Ken- 
tucky. The long close seasons in Massachusetts, Connecticut and 



THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF BIG GAME 173 

southern New York have caused a great migration of deer into those once- 
depopulated regions, — in fact, right down to tide-water. 

The Mule DEER.^This will be the first member of the Deer Family 
to become extinct in North America outside of the protected portions of 
its haunts. Its fatal preference for open ground and its habit of pausing 
to stare at the hunter have been, and to the end will be, its undoing. 
Possibly there are now two of these deer in the United States and British 
Columbia for every 98 that existed forty years ago, but no more. It is 
a deer of the bad lands and foothills, and its curiosity is fatal. 

The number of sportsmen who have hunted and killed this fine animal 
in its own wild and picturesque bad-lands is indeed quite small. It has 
been four-fifths exterminated by the resident hunter and ranchman, and 
to-day is found in the Rocky Mountain region most sparingly. Ten 
years ago it seemed right to hunt the so-called Rocky Mountain "black- 
tail" in northwestern Montana, because so many deer were there it did 
not seem to spell extermination. Now, conditions have changed. Since 
last winter's great slaughter in northwestern Montana, of 11,000 
hungry deer, the species has been so reduced that it is no longer 
right to kill mule deer anywhere in our country, and a universal close 
season for five years is the duty of every state which contains that 
species. 

The Real Black-Tailed Deer, of the Pacific coast, {Odocoileus 
columbianus) is, to most sportsmen of the Rocky Mountains and the East 
actually less known than the okapi ! Not one out of every hundred of 
them can recognize a mounted head of it at sight. It is a small, deli- 
cately-formed, delicately-antlered understudy of the big mule deer, and 
now painfully limited in its distribution. It is the deer of California 
and western Oregon, and it has been so ruthlessly slaughtered that to- 
day it is going fast. As conditions stand to-day, and without a radical 
change on the part of the people of the Pacific coast, this very inter- 
esting species is bound to disappear. It will not be persistent, like the 
white-tailed deer, but in the heavy forests, it will last much longer than 
the mule deer. 

My information regarding this deer is like the stock of specimens of 
it in museum collections, — meager and unsatisfactory. We need to know 
in detail how that species is faring to-day, and what its prospects are for 
the immediate future. In 1900, I saw great piles of skins from it in the 
fur houses of Seattle, and the sight gave me much concern. 

The Caribou, Generally. — I think it is not very difficult to 
forecast the future of the Genus Rangifer in North America, from the 
logic of the conditions of to-day. Thanks to the splendid mass of in- 
formation that has been accumulated regarding this group, we are able 
to draw certain conclusions. I think that the caribou of the Canadian 
Barren Grounds and northeastern Alaska will survive in great numbers 
for at least another century; that the caribou herds of Newfoundland 
will last nearly as long, and that in fifty years or less all the caribou of 
the great northwestern wilderness will be swept away. 



174 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

The reasons for these conclusions are by no means obscure, or far- 
fetched. 

In the first place, the barren-ground caribou are to-day enormously 
numerous, — undoubtedly running up into millions. It can not be pos- 
sible that they are being killed faster than they are breeding; and so 
they must be increasing. Their food supply is unlimited. They are pro- 
tected by two redoubtable champions, — Jack Frost and the Mosquito. 
Their country never will contain a great human population. The natives 
are so few in number, and so lazy, that even though they should become 
supplied with modern firearms, it is unlikely that they ever will make a 
serious impression on the caribou millions. The only thing to fear for the 
barren-ground caribou throngs is disease, — a factor that is beyond human 
prediction. 

It is reasonably certain that the Barren Grounds never will be netted 
by railways, — unless gold is discovered over a wide area. The fierce cold 
and hunger, and the billions of mosquitoes of the Barren Grounds will 
protect the caribou from the wholesale slaughter that "civilized" man 
joyously would inflict — if he had the chance. 

The caribou thousands of Newfoundland are fairly accessible to 
sportsmen and pot-hunters, but at the same time the colonial govern- 
ment can protect them from exterinination if it will. Already much has 
been done to check the. reckless and wicked slaughter that once prevailed. 
A bag limit of three bull caribou per annum has been fixed, which is 
enforced as to non-residents and sportsmen, but in a way that is much 
too "American" it is often ignored by residents in touch with the game. 
For instance, the guide of a New York gentleman whom I know admitted 
to my friend that each year he killed "about 25" caribou for himself 
and his family of four other persons. He explained thus: "When the 
inspector comes around, I show him two caribou hanging in my wood- 
shed, but back in the woods I have a little shack where I keep the others 
until I want them." 

The real sportsmen of the world never will make the slightest per- 
ceptible impression on the caribou of Newfoundland. For one thing, 
the hunting is much too tame to be interesting. If the caribou of that 
Island ever are exterminated, it will be strictly by the people of New- 
foundland, themselves. If the government will tighten its grip on the 
herds, they need never be exterminated. 

The caribou of New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario are few and 
widely scattered. Unless carefully conserved, they are not likely to last 
long ; for their country is annually penetrated in every direction by armed 
men, white and red. There is no means by which it can be proven, but 
from the number of armed men in those regions I feel sure that the typical 
woodland caribou species is being shot faster than it is breeding. The 
sportsmen and naturalists of Canada and New Brunswick would render 
good service by making a close and careful investigation of that question. 

The caribou of the northwestern wilderness are in a situation peculiarly 
their own. They inhabit a region of naked mountains and thin forests. 



THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF BIG GAME 175 

wherein they are conspicuous, easily stalked and easily killed. Nowhere 
do they exist in large herds of thousands, or even of many hundreds. 
They live in small bands of from ten to twenty head, and even those are 
far apart. The region in which they live is certain to be thoroughly 
opened up by railways, and exploited. Fifty years from now we will 
find every portion of the now-wild Northwest fairly accessible by rail. 
The building of the railways will be to the caribou — and to other big game 
— the day of doom. In that wild, rough region, no power on earth, — 
save that which might be able to deprive all the inhabitants and all 
visitors of firearms, — can possibly save the game outside of a few pre- 
serves that are diligently patroled. 

The big game of the northwest region, in which I include the interior 
of Alaska, will go\ It is only a question of time. Already the building 
of the city of Fairbanks, and the exploitation of the mining districts 
surrounding it, have led to such harrassment and slaughter of the migrat- 
ing caribou that the great herd which formerly traversed the Tanana 
country once a year has completely changed its migration route, and 
now keeps much farther north. The "crossing" of the Yukon near 
Eagle City has been abandoned. A hundred years hence, the north- 
western wilderness will be dotted with towns and criss-crossed with rail- 
ways; but the big game of it will be gone, except in the preserves that are 
yet to be made. This will particularly involve the caribou, moose, and 
mountain sheep of all species, which will be the first to go. The mountain 
goat and the forest bears will hold out longer than their more exposed 
neighbors of the treeless mountains. 

The Moose. — In the United States the moose is found in five states, — 
Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. There are 550 in 
the Yellowstone Park. In Maine and Minnesota only may moose be 
hunted and killed. In the season of 1909, 184 moose were killed in Maine, 
—a large number, considering the small moose population of that state. 
In northern Minnesota, we now possess a great national moose preserve 
of 909,743 acres; and in 1908 Mr. Fullerton, after a personal inspection 
in which he saw 189 moose in nine days, estimated the total moose popu- 
lation of the present day at 10,000 head. This is a moose preserve worth 
while. 

Outside of protected areas, the moose is the animal that is most easily 
exterminated. Its trail is easily followed, and its habits are thoroughly 
known, down to three decimal places. As a hunter's reward it is Great. 
Strange to say. New Brunswick has found that the moose is an animal 
that it is possible, and even easy, to protect. The death of a moose is an 
event that is not easily concealed ! Wherever it is thoroughly understood 
that the moose law will be enforced, the would-be poacher pauses to 
consider the net results to him of a jail sentence. 

In New Brunswick we have seen two strange things happen, during 
our own times. We have seen the moose migrate into, and permanently 
occupy, an extensive area that previously was destitute of that species. 
At the same time, we have seen a reasonable number of bull moose killed 



176 OVR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

by sportsmen without disturbing in the least the general equanimity of 
the general moose population ! And at this moment, the moose popula- 
tion of New Brunswick is almost incredible. Every moose hunter who 
goes there sees from 20 to 40 moose, and two of my friends last year saw, 
"in round numbers, about 100!" Up to date the size of adult antlers 
seem to be maintaining a high standard. 

In summer, the photographing of moose in the rivers, lakes and ponds 
of Maine and New Brunswick amounts to an industry. I am uneasy 
about the constant picking off of the largest and best breeding bulls of 
the Mirimachi country, lest it finally reduce the size and antlers of the 
moose of that region; but only the future can tell us just how that pros- 
pect stands to-day. 

In Alaska, our ever thoughtful and forehanded Biological Survey of 
the Department of Agriculture has by legal proclamation at one stroke 
converted the whole of the Kenai Peninsula into a magnificent moose 
preserve. This will save Alces gigas, the giant moose of Alaska, from 
extermination; and New Brunswick and the Minnesota preserve will 
save Alces americanus. But in the northwest, we can positively depend 
upon it that eventually, wherever the moose may legally be hunted and 
killed by any Tom, Dick or Harry who can afford a twenty-dollar rifle 
and a license, the moose surely will disappear. 

The moose laws of Alaska are strict — toward sportsmen, only! The 
miners, "prospectors" and Indians may kill as many as they please, "for 
food purposes. ' ' This opens the door to a great amount of unfair slaughter, 
Any coffee-cooler can put a pan and pick into his hunting outfit, go out 
after moose, and call himself a "prospector." 

I grant that the real prospector, who is looking for ores and minerals 
with an intelligent eye, and knows what he is doing, should have special 
privileges on game, to keep him from starving. The settled miner, how- 
ever, is in a different class. No miner should ask the privilege of living 
on wild game, any more than should the farmer, the steamboat man, the 
railway laborer, or the soldier in an army post. The Indian should have 
no game advantages whatever over a white man. He does not own the 
game of a region, any more than he owns its minerals or its water-power. 
He should obey the general game laws, just the same as white men. In 
Africa, as far as possible, the white population wisely prohibits the 
natives from owning or using firearms, and a good idea it is, too. I am 
glad there is one continent on which the " I'm-just-as-good-as-you-are " 
nightmare does not curse the whole land. 

The Musk-ox. — Now that the north pole has been safely discovered, 
and the south pole has become the storm-center of polar exploration, the 
harried musk-ox herds of the farthest north are having a rest. I think 
that most American sportsmen have learned that as a sporting proposi- 
tion there is about as much fun and glory in harrying a musk-ox herd 
with dogs, and picking off the members of it at "parade rest," as there is 
in shooting range cattle in a round-up. The habits of the animal posi- 
tively eliminate the real essence of sport, — difficulty and danger. When 



THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF BIG GAME 177 

a musk-ox band is chased by dogs, or by wolves, the full-grown members 
of it, bulls and cows alike, instantly form a close circle around the calves, 
facing outward shoulder to shoulder, and stand at bay. Without the aid 
of a gunner and a rifle, such a formation is invincible ! Mr. Paul Rainey's 
moving pictures tell a wonderful story of animal intelligence, bravery 
and devotion to the parental instinct. 

For some reason, the musk-ox herds do not seem to have perceptibly 
increased since man first encountered them. The number alive to-day 
appears to be no greater than it was fifty years ago; and this leads to 
the conclusion that the present delicate balance could easily be disturbed 
the wrong way. Fortunately, it seems reasonably certain that the In- 
dians of the Canadian Barren Grounds, the Eskimo of the far north, and 
the stray explorers all live outside the haunts of the species, and come 
in touch only with the edge of the musk-ox population as a whole. This 
leads us to hope and believe that, through the difficulties involved in 
reaching them, the main bodies of musk-ox of both species are safe from 
extermination. 

At the same time, the time has come for Canada, the United States 
and Denmark to join in formulating a stiff law for the prevention of 
wholesale slaughter of musk-ox for sport. It should be rendered impos- 
sible for another sportsman to kill twenty-three head in one day, as once 
occurred. Give the sportsman a bag of three bulls, and no more. To 
this, no true sportsman will object, and the objections of game-hogs 
only serve to confirm the justice of the thing they oppose. 

The Grizzly Bear. — To many persons it may seem strange that any- 
one should feel disposed to accord protection to such fierce predatory 
animals as grizzly bears, lions and tigers. But the spirit of fair play 
springs eternal in some human breasts. The sportsmen of the world 
do not stick at using long-range, high-power repeating rifles on big game, 
but they draw the line this side of traps, poisons and extermination. 
The sportsmen of India once thought, — for about a year and a day, — 
that it was permissible to kill troublesome and expensive tigers by poison. 
Mr. G. P. Sanderson tried it, and when his strychnine operations 
promptly developed three bloated and disgusting tiger carcasses, even 
his native followers revolted at the principle. That was the alpha and 
omega of Sanderson's poisoning activities. 

I am quite sure that if the extermination of the tiger from the whole 
of India were possible, and the to-be or not-to-be were put to a vote of 
the sportsmen of India, the answer would be a thundering "No!" Says 
Major J. Stevenson-Hamilton in his "Animal Life in Africa :" "It is impos- 
sible to contemplate the use against the lion of any other weapon than 
the rifle." 

The real sportsmen and naturalists of America are decidedly opposed 
to the extermination of the grizzly bear. They feel that the wilds of 
North America are wide enough for the accommodation of man}^ grizzlies, 
without crowding the proletariat. A Rocky Mountain without a grizzly 
upon it, or at least a bear of some kind, is only half a mountain, — com- 



178 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

monplace and tame. Put one two-year-old grizzly cub upon it, and presto ! 
every cubic yard of its local atmosphere reeks with romantic uncertainty 
and fearsome thrills. 

A few persons have done considerable talking and writing about the 
damage to stock inflicted by bears, but I think there is little justification 
for such charges. Certainly, there is not one-tenth enough real damage 
done by bears to justify their extermination. At the present time, we 
hear that the farmers ( !) of Kadiak Island, Alaska, are being seriously 
harassed and damaged by the big Kadiak bear, — an animal so rare and 
shy that it is very difficult for a sportsman to kill one ! I think the charges 
against the bears, — if the Kadiak Islanders ever really have made any, — 
need to be proven, by the production of real evidence. 

In the United States, outside of our game preserves, I know of not 
one locality in which grizzly bears are sufficiently numerous to justify a 
sportsman in going out to hunt them. The California grizzly, once 
represented by "Monarch " in Golden Gate Park, is almost, if not wholly, 
extinct. In Montana, outside of Glacier Park it is useless to apply for 
wild grizzlies. In the Bitter Root Mountains and Clearwater Mountains 
of Idaho, there are grizzlies, but they hide so effectually under the snow- 
bent willows on the "slides" that it is almost imposssible to get a shot. 
Northwestern Wyoming still contains a few grizzlies, but there are so 
many square miles of mountains around each animal it is now almost 
useless to go hunting for them. British Columbia, western Alberta and 
the coast mountains at least as far as Skaguay, and Yukon Territory 
generally, all contain grizzlies, and the sportsman who goes out for sheep, 
caribou and moose is reasonably certain to see half a dozen bears and kill 
at least one or two. In those countries, the grizzly species will hold 
forth long after all killable grizzlies have vanished from the United States 

I think that it is now time for California, Montana, Washington, 
Oregon, Idaho and Wyoming to give grizzly bears protection of some 
sort. Possibly the situation in those states calls for a five-year close 
season. Even British Columbia should now place a bag limit on this 
species. This has seemed clear to me ever since two of my friends killed 
(in the spring of 1912) six grizzlies in one week! But Provincial Game 
Warden A. Bryan Williams says that at present it would be impossible 
to impose a bag limit of one per year on the grizzlies of British Columbia ; 
and Mr. Williams is a sincere game-protector. 

The Brown Bears of Alaska. — These magnificent monsters present 
a perplexing problem, which I am inclined to believe can be satisfactorily 
solved by the Biological Survey only in short periods, say of three or 
four years each. Naturally, the skin hunters of Alaska ardently desire 
the skins of those bears, for the money they represent. That side of 
the bear problem does not in the least appeal to the ninety odd millions 
of people who live this side of Alaska. The skins of the Alaskan brown 
bears have little value save as curiosities, nailed upon the wall, where 
they can not be stepped upon and injured. The hunting of those bears, 
however, is a business for men; and it is partly for that reason they 



THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF BIG GAME 



179 



^ Jwn 





; rw^jrwiRv «.""*» 



THE WICHITA NATIONAL BISON HERD 
Presented by the New York Zoological Society 

should be preserved. A bear-hunt on the Alaska Peninsula, Admiralty 
or Montagu Islands, is an event of a lifetime, and with a bag limit of one 
brown bear, the species would be quite safe from extermination. 

In Alaska there is some dissatisfaction over the protection accorded 
the big brown bears ; but those rules are right as Jar as they go! A gov- 
ernor of Alaska once said to me : ' ' The preservation of the game of Alaska 
should be left to the people of Alaska. It is their game; and they will 
preserve it all right!" 

The answer? Not by a long shot! 

Only three things were wrong with the ex-governor's view: 

1. — The game of Alaska does not belong to the people who live in 
Alaska — with the intent to get out to-morrow! It belongs to the 93,000,- 
000 people of the Nation. 

2. — The preservation of the Alaskan fauna on the public domain 
should not be left unreservedly to the people of Alaska, because 

3. — As sure as shooting, they will not preserve it ! 

Congress is right in appropriating $15,000 for game protection in 
Alaska. It is very necessary that the regulations for conserving the wild 
life should be fixed by the Secretary of Agriculture, with the advice of 
the Biological Survey. 

The Black Bear is an interesting citizen. He harms nobody nor 
anything; he affords good sport; he objects to being exterminated, and 
wherever in North America he is threatened with extermination, he 



180 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

should at once be given protection ! A black bear in the wilds is harmless. 
In captivity, posed as a household "pet," he is decidedly dangerous, and 
had best be given the middle of the road. In big forests he is a grand 
stayer, and will not be exterminated from the fauna of the United States 
until Washington is wrecked by anarchists. 

The American Bison. — I regard the American bison species as now 
reasonably secure against extermination. This is due to the fact that it 
breeds persistently and successfully in captivity, and to the great efforts 
that have been put forth by the United States Government, the Canadian 
Government, the American Bison Society, the New York Zoological So- 
ciety, and several private individuals. 

The species reached its lowest ebb in 1889, when there were only 256 
head in captivity and 835 running wild. The increase has been as follows : 

1888— W. T. Hornaday's census 1,300 

1902— S. P. Langley's census 1,394 

1905— Frank Baker's census 1,697 

1908— W. T. Hornadav's census 2,047 

1910— W. P. Wharton's census (in North Amevica) 2,108 

1912— W. P. Wharton's census (in North America) 2,907 

To-day, nearly one-half of the living bison are in very large govern- 
mental parks, perpetually established and breeding rapidly, as follows : 

In the United States. 

Yellowstone ParK fenced herd, founded by Congress 125 

Montana National Bison Range, founded by The American Bison Society 69 

Wichita Bison Range, founded by The New Yo-k Zoological Society 39 

Wind Cave Bison Range, S. Dakota, founded by Am. Bison Society .... To be stocked 
Niobrara (Neb.) National Bison Range, now in process of creation To be stocked 

In Canada. 

Buffalo Park, Wainwright, Alberta 1,052 

Elk Island Park, Alberta 53 

Rocky Mountains Park, Banflf, Alberta 27 

Total National and Provincial Preserves 1,365 

Of wild bison there are only three groups: 49 head in the Yellowstone 
National Park, about 75 Pablo "outlaws" around the Montana Bison 
Range, and between 300 and 400 head in northern Athabasca, south- 
west of Fort Resolution, existing in small and widely scattered bands. 

The efforts of man to atone for the great bison slaughter by preserv- 
ing the species from extinction have been crowned with success. Two 
governments and two thousand individuals have shared this task, — 
solely for sentimental reasons. In these facts we find reason to hope 
and believe that other efforts now being made to save other species from 
annihilation will be equally successful. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF AFRICAN GAME 

Thanks to the diHgence with which sportsmen and field naturaHsts 
have recorded their observations in the haunts of big game, it is not at 
all difficult to forecast the immediate future of the big game of the world. 
We may safely assume that all lands well suited to agriculture, mining 
and grazing will become populated by rifle-bearing men, with the usual 
result to the wild mammals and birds. At the same time, the game of 
the open mountains everywhere is thinly distributed and easily exter- 
minated. On the other hand, the unconquerable forest jungles of certain 
portions of the tropics will hold their own, and shelter their four-footed 
inhabitants for centuries to come. 

On the open mountains of the world and on the grazing lands most big 
game is now being killed much faster than it breeds. This is due to the 
attacks of five times too many hunters, open seasons that are too long, 
and bag limits that are far too liberal. As an example, consider Africa 
Viewed in any way it may be taken, the bag limit in British East Africa 
is appallingly high. Notice this astounding array of wild creatures that 
each hunter may kill under a license costing only $2§o! 



2 Buffalo 
2 Rhinoceros 
2 Hippopotamus 

1 Eland 

2 Grevy Zebra 
20 Common Zebra 

2 Fringe-eared Oryx 
4 Beisa Antelope 
4 Waterbuck 
1 Sable Antelope 
1 Roan Antelope 

1 Greater Kudu 
4 Lesser Kudu 

10 Topi 

20 Coke Hartebeest 

2 Neumann HarteVjeest 
4 Jackson Hartebeest 

6 Hunter's Antelope 
4 Thomas Kob 
2 Bongo 
4 Pallah 
2 Sitatunga 



3 Gnu 

12 Grant Gazelle 

4 Waller's Gazelle 
10 Harvey's Duiker 
10 Isaac's Duiker 
10 Blue Duiker 

10 Kirk's Dik-dik 

10 Guenthcr's Dik-dik 

10 Hinde's Dik-dik 

10 Cavendish Dik-dik 

10 Abyssinian Oribi 

10 Haggard's Oribi 

10 Kenya Oribi 

10 vSuni 

10 Klipspringer 

10 Ward's Reedl)uck 

10 Chanler's Reedbuck 

10 Thompson Gazelle 

10 Peters Gazelle 

10 Soemmerring Gazelle 

10 Bushbuck 

10 Haywood Bushbuck 



The grand total is a possible 300 large hoofed and horned animals 
representing 44 species! Add to this all the lions, leopards, cheetahs, 



182 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

cape hunting dogs and hyaenas that the hunter can kill, and it will be 
enough to stock a zoological garden! 

Quite a number of these species, like the sable antelope, kudu. Hunter's 
antelope, bongo and sitatunga are already rare, and therefore they are 
all the more eagerly sought. 

Into the fine grass-lands of British East Africa, suitable for crops and 
stock grazing, settlers are steadily going. Each one is armed, and at 
once becomes a killer of big game. And all the time the visiting sports- 
men are increasing in number, going farther from the Uganda Railway, 
and persistently seeking out the rarest and finest of the game. The 
buffalo has recovered from the slaughter by rinderpest only in time to 
meet the onset of oversea sportsmen. 

Mr. Arthur Jordan has seen much of the big game of British East 
Africa, and its killing. Him I asked to tell me how long, in his opinion, 
the big game of that territory will last outside of the game preserves, 
as it is now being killed. He said, "Oh, it will last a long time. I think 
it will last fifteen years!" 

Fifteen years! And this for the richest big-game fauna of any one 
spot in the whole world, which Nature has been several million years in 
developing and placing there! 

At present the marvelous herds of big game of British East Africa 
and Uganda constitute the grandest zoological spectacle that the world 
ever has seen in historic times. For such an area, the number of species 
is incredible, and until they are seen, the thronging masses of individuals 
are beyond conception. It is easy to say "a herd of 3,000 zebras; " but 
no mere words can give an adequate impression of the actual army of 
stripes and bars, and hoofs thundering in review over a grassy plain. 

But the settlers say, "The zebras must go ! They break through our 
best wire fences, ruin our crops, despoil us of the fruits of long and toilsome 
efforts, and much expenditure. We simply can not live in a country 
inhabited by herds of wild zebras." And really, their contention is well 
founded. When it is necessary to choose between wild animals and 
peaceful agriculture for millions of men, the animals must give way. 

In those portions of the great East African plateau region that are 
suited to modern agriculture, stretching from Buluwayo to northern 
Uganda, the wild herds are doomed to be crowded out by the farmer and 
the fruit-grower. This is the inevitable result of civilization and progress 
in wild lands. Marauding battalions of zebras, bellicose rhinoceroses 
and murderous buffaloes do not fit in with ranches and crops, and chil- 
dren going to school. Except in the great game preserves, the swamps 
and the dense jungles it is certain that the big game of the whole of east- 
ern Africa is foredoomed to disappear, — the largest and most valu- 
able species first. 

Five hundred years from now, when North America is worn out, and 
wasted to a skeleton of what it now is, the great plateau region of East 
Africa between Cape Town and Lake Rudolph will be a mighty empire. 



THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF AFRICAN GAME 



183 




DISTRIBUTION AND PREVALENCE 
OF THE LION IN AFRICA 



Exterminated in the last Century 
I Rare 
\ Frequent 

Moit Numerous 



MAP SHOWING THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE LION 

Incidentally, it is also an Index of the Disappearance of African Big Game Generally. 
From an Article in the Review of Reviews, for August. 1912, by Cyrus C. Adams, and 
Based Largely upon the E.xhaustive Studies of Dr. C. M. Engel, of Copenhagen. 



teeming with white population. Giraffes and rhinoceroses now are 
trampling over the sites of the cities and universities of the future. Then 
the herds of grand game that now make Africa a sportsman's wonderland 
will exist only in closed territory, in books, and in memory. 

From what has befallen in South Africa, we can easily and correctly 
forecast the future of the big game of British East Africa and Uganda. 
Less than fifty years ago. Cape Colony, Natal, Zululand, and every 



184 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

country up to the Zambesi was i;eeming with herds of big wild animals, 
just as the northern provinces now are. As late as 1890, when Rhodesia 
was taken over by the Chartered Company, and the capital city of Salis- 
bury was staked out, an American boy in the Pioneer Corps, now Honor- 
able William Harvey Brown, of Salisbury, wrote thus of the Gwibi Flats, 
near Salisbury: 

"That evening I beheld on those fiats a sight which probably will 
never again be seen there to the end of the world. The variety deploying 
before me was almost incredible! There, within the range of my vision 
were groups of roan, sable and tsessebi antelopes, Burchell zebras, [now 
totally extinct !] elands, reedbucks, steinbucks and ostriches. It was like 
Africa in the days of Livingstone. As I sat on my horse, viewing with 
ainazement this wonderful panorama of wild life, I was startled by a herd 
that came galloping around a small hill just behind me." — ^"On the 
South African Frontier," p. 114.) 

That was in 1890. And how is it to-day? 

Salisbury is a modern city, endorsed by two lines of railway. The 
Gwibi Flats are farms. There is some big game yet, in Rhodesia south 
of the Zambesi, but to find it you must go at least a week's journey froin 
the capital, to the remote corners that have not yet been converted into 
farms or mining settlements. North of the Zambesi, Rhodesia yet 
contains plenty of big game. The Victoria Falls station is a popular 
starting point for hunting expeditions headed northeast and northwest. 
In the northwest the game is yet quite in a state of nature. Unfortunately 
the Barotse natives of that region can procure from the Portuguese 
traders all the firearms and ammunition that they can pay for, and by 
treaty they retain their hunting rights. The final result will be — exter- 
mination of the game. 

Elsewhere throughout Rhodesia the natives are not permitted to 
have guns and gunpowder, — a very wise regulation. In Alaska our 
Indians are privileged to kill game all the year round, and they have 
modern firearms with which to do it. 

And how is it with the game of that day ? 

The true Burchell 's zebra is now regarded as extinct! In Cape Colony 
and Natal, that once teemed with big game in the old-fashioned African 
way, they are counting the individual wild animals that remain! Also, 
they are making game preserves, literally everywhere. 

Now that the best remaining game districts of Africa are rapidly 
coming under British control, it is a satisfaction to observe that the 
governing bodies and executive officers are alive to the necessity of 
preserving the big game from actual extinction. Excepting German 
East Africa, from Uganda to Cape Colony the game preserves form an 
almost continuous chain. It is quite impossible to enumerate all of them; 
but the two in British East Africa are of enormous size, and are well 
stocked with game. South Africa contains a great many smaller preserves 
and a few specimen herds of big game, but that is about all. Except in 
a few localities the hunting of big game in that region is done forever. 



THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF AFRICAN GAME 185 

The Western Districts Game and Trout Protective Association of 
South Africa recently, (1911), has made careful counts and estimates of 
the number of individual game animals remaining in Cape Colony, with 
the following result : 

Big Game in the Cape Province 

From information kindly placed at the disposal of the Association by 
the Government, it was found that the following varieties of big game are 
still found in the Province. The numbers, however, are only approximate : 

Blesbok: About 400 in Steynsburg, and 35 in Queen's Town divisions. 

Bontebok: About 30 in Bredasdorp and 45 in Swellendam divisions. 

Buffalo: About 340 in Uitenhage, 120 in Alexandria, and 75 in Bathurst divisions. 

Elephants: About 130 in Alexandria, 160 in Uitenhage, 40 in Bathurst, and 20 in 
Knysna divisions. 

Gemsbok: About 2,450 in Namaqualand, 4,500 in Vryburg, 4,000 in Gordonia, and 
670 in the Kenhardt, Mafeking and Barkly West divisions. 

Koodoo: About 10,000, found chiefly in the divisions of Albany, Barkly West, Fort 
Beaufort, Hay, Herbert, Jansenville, Kuruman, Ladismith, Mafeking, Mossel Bay, 
Oudtshoorn, Riversdale, Steytlerville, Uitenhage, Victoria East and Vryburg. 

Oribi: About 120, in the divisions of Albany and Alexandria. 

Rietbok: About 170, in the Komgha division. 

Zebra: About 560, most of which are to be found in the divisions of Cradock, George 
and Oudtshoorn. A few are to be found in the divisions of Uniondale and Uitenhage. 

Springbok: Being migratory, it is difficult to estimate their number. In some years 
they are compelled by drought to invade the Province in large numbers. They are 
then seen as far south as Calvinia and Fraserburg. Large numbers are, however, 
fenced in on private estates in various parts of the Province. 

KUpspringers: About 11,200, in the following divisions, viz.: Namaqualand, 6,5.59; 
Kuruman, 2,100; Steytlerville, 1,. 530; Oudtshoorn, 275; Hay, 250; Ladismith, 220; 
Graaff-Reinet, 119; Kenhardt, 66; and Cradock, 56. 

Hartebeest: About 9,700, principally in the divisions of Vryburg, Gordonia, Kuruman, 
Mafeking, Kimberley, Hay and Beaufort West. 

Wildebeest: About 3,450 in Vryburg, 80 each in Gordonia and Kuruman, 65 in Mafe- 
king, 20 in Queen's Town, and a few in the Bredasdorp divisions. 

Eland: About 12 in the Graaff-Reinet division, privately bred. 

The above showing of the pitifully small numbers of the specimens 
that constitute the remnant of the big-game of the Cape suggest just 
one thing: — a universal close season throughout Cape Colony, and no 
hunting whatever for ten years. And yet, what do we see? 

The Report from which the above census was taken contains half a 
column of soHd matter, in small type, giving a list of the open seasons 
all over Cape Colony, during which kilHng may be done ! So it seems that 
the spirit of slaughter is the same in Africa that it is in America, — kill, 
as long as there is anything alive to kill ! 

This list is of startling interest, because it shows how closely the 
small remnants of big game are now marked down in South Africa. 

In view of the success with which Englishmen protect their game 
when once they have made up their minds to do so, it is fair to expect 



186 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

that the herds now under protection, as listed above, will save their 
respective species from extinction. It is alarming, however, to note the 
wide territory covered by the deadly "open seasons," and to wonder 
when the bars really will be put up. 

To-day, Mashonaland is a very-much-settled colony. The Cape to 
Cairo railway and trains de luxe long ago attained the Falls of the Zam- 
besi, and now the Curator of the Salisbury Museum will have to search 
diligently in far off Nyassaland, and beyond the Zambesi River, to find 
enough specimens to fill his cases with representatives of the vanished 
Rhodesian fauna. Once (1892) the white rhinoceros was found in 
northern Rhodesia; but never again. In Salisbury, elands and zebras 
are nearly as great a curiosity as they are in St. Louis. 

But for the discovery of white rhinoceroses in the Lado district, on 
the western bank of the Nile below Gondokoro, we would now be saying 
that Rhinoceros simus is within about ten specimens of total extinction. 

From South Africa, as far up as Salisbury, in central Rhodesia, at 
least 99 per cent of the big game has disappeared before the white man's 
rifle. Let him who doubts this scan the census of wild animals still living 
in Cape Colony. 

From all the other regions of Africa that are easily accessible to gun- 
ners, the animal life is vigorously being shot out, and no man in his senses 
will now say that the big game is breeding faster than it is being killed. 
The reverse is painfully true. Mr. Carl Akeley, in his quest for a really 
large male elephant for the American Museum found and looked over 
a thousand males without finding one that was really fine and typical. 
All the photographs of elephant herds that were taken by Kermit Roose- 
velt and Akeley show a striking absence of adult, males and of females 
with long tusks. There are only young males, and young females with 
small, short tusks. The answer is — the white ivory hunters have killed 
nearly all the elephants bearing good ivory. 

The slaughter of big game is going on furiously in British East Africa, 
because the Uganda Railway opens up the entire territory to hunters. 
Anyone, man or woman, who can raise $5,000 in cash can go there and 
make a huge "bag" of big game. With a license costing only $250 he 
can kill enough big game to sink a ship. 

The bag limit in British East Africa is ruinously extravagant. If the 
government desires the extermination of the game, such a bag limit 
surely will promote that end. It is awful to think that for a petty sum 
any man may buy the right to kill ^oo head of hoofed and horned animals, 
of 44 species, not counting the carnivorous animals that also may be 
killed. That bag limit should immediately be reduced y^ per cent! 

As matters stand to-day in British East Africa, the big game of the 
country, outside the three preserves, is absolutely certain to disappear, 
in about one-fourth of the time that it took South Africa to accomplish 
the same result. The reasons are obvious: — superior accessibility, more 
deadly rifles, expert professional guides, and a widespread craze for 
killing big game. With care and economy, British East Africa should 



THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF AFRICAN GAME 187 

furnish good hunting for two centuries, but as things are going on to- 
day, twenty years will see a tremendous change for the worse, and a 
disappearance of game that will literally astonish the natives. 

German East Africa and Uganda will not exterminate their quotas 
of big game quite so soon. The absence of railways is a great factor in 
game-existence. The Congo Free State contains game and sporting 
possibilities — on the unexplored uplands between the rivers, — that are as 
yet totally unknown to sportsmen at large. We are accustomed to think- 
ing of the whole basin of the Congo as a vast, gloomy and impenetrable 
forest. 

There is to-day in Africa a vast reserve supply of grand game. It 
inhabits regions that are either unknown, or most difficult to penetrate. 
As a species in point, consider the okapi. Only the boldest and most 
persistent explorers ever have set foot in its tangled and miasmatic 
haunts. It may be twenty years before a living specimen can be brought 
out. The gorilla and the chimpanzee are so well protected by the density 
of their jungles that they never can be exterminated — until the natives 
are permitted to have all the firearms that they desire ! When that day 
arrives, it is "good-night" to all the wild life that is large enough to eat 
or to wear. 

The quagga and the blaubok became extinct before the world learned 
that their existence was threatened ! The giant eland, the sable antelope, 
the greater kudu, the bontebok, blessbok, the mountain and Burchell 
zebras, all the giraffes save that of Nigeria, the big waterbucks, the nyala, 
the sitatunga, the bongo, and the gerenuk — all will go in the same way, 
everywhere outside the game preserves. The buffalo, zebra and rhi- 
noceros are especially marked for destruction, as annoyances to colonists. 
You who read of the killing of these species to-day will read of their total 
disappearance to-morrow. So long as the hunting of them is permitted, 
their ultimate disappearance is fixed and certain. It is not the way of 
rifle-shooting English colonists to permit herds of big game to run about 
merely to be looked at. 

Naturally, the open plains of Africa, and the thin forests of the 
plateau regions, will be the first to lose their big game. In the gloomy 
fastnesses of the great equatorial forests, and other really dense forests 
wherever found, the elephants, the Derby eland, the bongo, the okapi, 
the buffaloes (of three species), the bush-pigs, the bushbucks and the 
forest-loving antelopes generally will live, for possibly one hundred j^ears, 
— or until the natives secure plenty of modern firearms and ammunition. 
Whenever and wherever savages become supplied with rifles, then it is 
time to measure each big-game animal for its coffin. 

The elephants of the great equatorial forest westward of the lake 
region will survive long after the last eastern elephant has bitten the dust. 
The pygmy elephant of the lower Congo region (Elephas pumilio) will 
be the last African elephant species to disappear — because it inhabits 
dense miasmatic jungles, its tusks are of the smallest size, and it has the 
least commercial value. 



CHAPTER XIX 
THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF THE GAME OF ASIA 

After a successful survival of man's influence through two thousand 
years, at last the big game of India has made a good start on the road to 
vanishment. Up to 1870 it had held its own with a tenacity that was 
astonishing. In 1877, I found the Ganges — Jumna dooab, the Animallai 
Hills, the Wynaad Forest and Ceylon literally teeming with herds of 
game. The Animallais in particular were a hunter's paradise. In each 
day of hunting, large game of some kind was a certainty. The Nilgiri Hills 
had been quite well shot out, but in view of the very small area and open, 
golf-links character of the whole top of that wonderful sky plateau, that 
was no cause for wonderment. 

In those days no native shikaree owned and operated a gun, — or at 
the most very, very few of them did. If a rogue elephant, a man-eating 
tiger or a nasty leopard became a public nuisance, it was a case for a 
sahib to come and doctor it with a .577 double-barreled express rifle, 
worth $150 or more; and the sahibs had shooting galore. 

I think that no such great wild-life sights as those of the plateau 
regions of Africa ever were seen in southern Asia. Conditions there are 
different, and usually the game is widely scattered. The sambar deer 
and muntjac of the dense forests, the axis of the bamboo glades, the 
thameng deer of the Burmese jungles, the sladang, or gaur, of the awful 
Malay tangle, and the big cats and canines will last long and well. The 
ibexes, markhors, tahr and all the wild sheep eventually will be shot out 
by sportsmen who are ' ' sheep crazy. ' ' The sheep and goats of Asia will 
disappear soon after the plains animals of Africa, because no big game 
that lives in the open can much longer endure the modern, inexpensive 
long-range rifles of deadly accuracy and limitless repetition of fire. 

Eventually, I fear that by some unlucky turn of Fortune's wheel 
all the native hunters of Asia will obtain rifles; and when they do, we 
soon will see the end of the big game. 

Even to-day we find that the primitive conditions of 1877 have been 
greatly changed. In the first place, about every native shikaree (hunter) 
owns a rifle, at a cost of about $25; and many other natives possess 
guns, and assume to hunt with them. The logical conclusion of this is 
more hunting and less game. The development of the country has re- 
duced the cover for game. New roads and railways have made the game 
districts easily accessible, and real sportsmen are now three or four times 
as numerous as they were in 1877. 

At Toonacadavoo. in the Animallai Hills where thirty-five years ago 



THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF ASIAN GAME 189 

there modestly nestled on the ridge beside the river only Forest Ranger 
Theobold's bungalow, built of mud and covered with grass thatch and 
bamboo rats, there is now a regular hill station lighted by electricity, a 
modern sanatorium high up on the bluff, a club, golf links, and other 
modern improvements. In my day there were exactly four guns on the 
Animallais. Now there are probably one hundred; and it is easy to 
guess how much big game remains on the Delectable Mountains in 
comparison with the golden days of 1877. I should say that there is 
now only one game animal for every twenty-five that were there in my 
day. 

I am told that it is like that all over India. Beyond question, the 
gun-sellers and gun-users have been busy there, as everywhere else. 
The game of India is on the toboggan slide, and the old days of abundance 
have gone forever. 

The first fact that strikes us in the face is the impending fate of the 
great Indian rhinoceros, an animal as wonderful as the Titanothere or 
the Megatherium. It is like a gift handed down to us straight out of 
the Pleistocene age, a million years back. The British paleontologists 
to-day marvel at Elephas ganesa, and by great labor dig his bones out of 
the Sewalik rocks, but what one of them all has yet made a move to save 
Rhinoceros indicus from the quick extermination that soon will be his 
portion unless he is accorded perpetual and real protection from the 
assaults of man? 

Let the mammalogists of the world face this fact. The available 
cover of the Indian rhinoceros is alarmingly decreasing, throughout 
Assam and Bengal where the behemoth of the jungle has a right to live. 
It is believed that the few remaining rhinos are being shot much faster 
then they are breeding ; and what will be the effect of this upon an animal 
that requires fourteen years to reach full maturity? To-day, the most 
wonderful hoofed mammal of all Asia is booked for extermination, and 
unless very radical measures for its preservation are at once carried into 
effect, it is probable that twenty years more will see the last Indian rhino 
go down to rise no more. One remedy would be a good, ample rhinoceros 
preserve; and another, the most absolute and permanent protection 
for the species, all along the line. Half-way measures will not suffice. 
It is time to ring in a general alarm. 

During the past eighteen years, only three specimens of that species 
have come out of India for the zoological gardens and parks of the world, 
and I think there are only five in captivity, all told. 

We are told that in India now the natives are permitted to have about 
all the firearms they can pay for. Naturally, in a country containing 
over 300,000,000 people this is a deadly thing. Of course there are shoot- 
ing regulations, many of them; but their enforcement is so imperfect 
that it is said that the natives are attacking the big game on all sides, 
with deadly effect. I fear it is utterly impossible for the Indian govern- 
ment to put enough wardens into the field to watch the doings of the 
grand army of native poachers. 



190 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Fortunately, the Indian native, — unlike the western frontiersman, — 
does not contend that he owns the big game, or that "all men are born 
free and equal." At the same time, he means to have his full share of it, 
to eat, and to sell in various forms for cash. Even in India, the sale-of- 
game dragon has reared its head, and is to-day in need of being scotched 
with an iron hand. 

When I received direct from a friend in the native state of Kashmir a 
long printed circular setting forth the hunting laws and game-protective 
measures of that very interesting principality, it gave me a shock. It was 
disquieting to be thus assured that the big game of Kashmir has dis- 
appeared to such an extent that strong protective measures are necessary. 
It was as if the Chief Eskimo of Etah had issued a strong proclamation 
for the saving of the musk-ox. 

In Kashmir, the destruction of game has become so serious that a 
Game Preservation Department has been created, with the official staff 
that such an organization requires. The game laws are printed annually, 
and any variations from them may be made only by the authority of the 
Maharajah himself. Up to date, eight game jjreserves have been created, 
having a total area of about thee hundred square miles. In addition to 
these, there are twelve small preserves, each having an area of from 
twenty-five to fifty square miles. By their locations, these seem to 
provide for all the species of big game that are found in Kashmir, — the 
ibex, two forms of markhor, the tahr, Himalayan bighorn sheep, bur- 
rhel and goral. 

In our country we have several states that are very large, very di- 
versified in surface, and still inhabited by large game. Has any one of 
those states created a series of game preserves even half way comparable 
with those of Kashmir? I think not. Montana has made a beginning 
with two preserves, — Snow Creek and the Pryor Mountains, — but be- 
side the splendid series of Kashmir they are not worthy of serious mention. 

And then following closely in the wake of that document came a 
lengthy article in the "Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London," 
by E. C. Stebbing, in which a correspondent of the Indian Field clearly 
sets forth the fact that the big game of the Himalayas now is menaced 
by a peril new to our consideration, but of a most deadly character. 
Hear him : 

' ' In this inventory (of game destroyers in India) , the Gurkha soldier 
does not find a place, for he belongs to a class which he amply fills by 
himself with his small but very important personality. He deserves 
separate notice. From the banks of the Sarda on the frontier of Nepal, 
to the banks of the Indus, the battalions of these gallant little men are 
scattered in cantonments all along the outer spurs of the Himalayan 
range. In seven or eight of these locations there are at least 14,000 of 
these disciplined warriors, who, in the absence of opportunities for 
spilling human blood legitimately, are given a free hand for slaughtering 
wild animals, along five-hundred miles of the best hunting grounds of 
Upper India." 



THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF ASIAN GAME 191 

Now, since those facts must be true as reported, do they not in them- 
selves constitute a severe arraignment of the Indian government ? Why- 
should that state of game slaughter endure, when a single executive order 
to the C. O. of each post would effectually stop it? 

In the making of game preserves, or "sanctuaries" as they are called 
out there, the Government of India has shown rare and commendable 
diligence. The total number is too great for enumeration here. The 
native state of Mysore has seven, and the Nilgiri Hills have sanctuaries 
aggregating about 100,000 acres in area. In the Wynaad Forest, my old 
hunting-grounds at Mudumallay have been closed to bison shooting, 
because of the alarming decrease of bison (gaur) through shooting and 
disease. The Kundah Forest Reserve has been made a partial game pre- 
serve, but the door might as well have been left wide open as so widely 
ajar. 

In eastern Bengal and Assam, several game preserves have been 
created. On the whole, by the diligence and thoroughness with which 
sanctuaries, as they are termed, have been created quite generally 
throughout India, it is quite evident that the government and the sports- 
men of India have become thoroughly alarmed by the great decrease of 
the game, and the danger of the extermination of species. In the past 
India has been the finest and best-stocked hunting-ground of all Asia, 
quite beyond compare, and the destruction of her once-splendid fauna 
of big game would be a zoological calamity. 

Tibet. — As yet, Tibet offers free hunting, without legal let or hin- 
drance, to every sportsman who can climb up to her lofty, wind-swept 
and whizzing-cold plateau. The man who hunts the Ovis poll, superb 
creature though it be, pays in full for his trophies. The ibex of the south 
help out the compensatory damages, but even with that, the list of 
species available in southern Tibet is painfully small. The Mitchell 
takin can be reached from China, via Chungking, after a long, hard 
journey, over Consvd Mason Mitchell's trail; but the takin is about the 
only large hoofed game available. 

The Altai Mountains, of western China, contain the magnificent 
Siberian argali, the grandfather of all sheep species, whose horns must 
be seen to be believed. Through a quest for that species the Russian 
military authorities played upon Mr. George L. Harrison and his comrade 
a very grim and unsportsmanlike joke. At the frontier military post, 
on the Russo-Chinese border, the two Americans were courteously 
halted, hospitably entertained, and prevented from going into the argali- 
infested mountains that loomed up before them only a few miles away' 
The Russian officers said : 

"Sheep? Why, if you really want sheep, we will send out some of our 
brave soldiers to shoot some for you ; but there is no need for you to take 
the trouble to go after them!" 

After Mr. Harrison and his comrade had spent $5,000, and traveled 
half way around the world for those sheep, that is in brief the story of 
how the cup of Tantalus was given them by the Russians, actually at 



192 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

their goal! As spoil-sports, those Russian officers were the champions 
of the world. 

Seven hundred miles southeastward of the Altai Mountains of western 
China, guarded by the dangerous hostility of savage native tribes, there 
exists and awaits the scientific explorer, according to report, an undis- 
covered wild horse. The Bicolored Wild Horse is black and white, and 
joy awaits the zoologist or sportsman who sees it first. Evidently it 
will not soon be exterminated by modern rifles. 

The Impenetrable Forests. — Although the mountains of central Asia 
will in time be cleared of their big game, — when by hook and by crook 
the natives secure plenty of modern firearms, — there are places in the 
Far East that we know will contain big game forever and a day. Take 
the Malay Peninsula, Borneo and Sumatra as examples. 

Mr. C. William Beebe, who recently has visited the Far East, has 
described how the state of Selangor, between Malacca and Penang, has 
taken on many airs of improvement since 1878, and sections of Sarawak 
Territory are being cut down and burned for the growing of rubber. 
Despite this I am trying to think that those developments menace the 
total volume of the wild life of those regions but little. I wonder if those 
tangled, illimitable, ever-renewing jungles yet know that their faces 
have been scratched. White men never will exterminate the big game 
of the really dense jungles of the eastern tropics; but with enough axes, 
snares, guns and cartridges the natives may be able to accomplish it! 

In Malayana there are some jungles so dense, so tangled with lianas 
and so thorny with Livistonias and rattan that nothing larger than a 
cat can make way through them. There are thousands of square miles 
so boggy, so swampy, so dark, gloomy and mosquito-ridden that all men 
fear them and avoid them, and in them rubber ctdture must be impossible. 
In those silent places the gaur, the rhino, the Malay sambar, the clouded 
leopard and the orang-utan surely are measurably safe from the game- 
bags and market gunners of the shooting world. It is good to think that 
there is an equatorial belt of jungle clear around the world, in Central 
and South America as well as in the old World, in which there will be 
little extermination in our day, except of birds for the feather market. 
But the open plains, open mountains, and open forests of Asia and Aus- 
tralasia are in different case. Eventually they will be "shot out." 

China, all save Yunnan and western Mongolia, is now horribly 
barren of wild life. Can it ever be brought back? We think it can not. 
The millions of population are too many ; and except in the great forest 
tracts, the spread of modern firearms will make an end of the game. 
Already the pheasants are being swept out of China for the London 
market, and extinction is staring several species in the face. On the whole, 
the pheasants of the Old World are being hit hard by the rubber-planting 
craze. Mr. Beebe declares that owing to the inrush of aggressive capital, 
the haunts of many species of pheasants are being denuded of all their 
natural cover, and some mountain species that are limited to small areas 
are practically certain to be exterminated at an early date. 



THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF ASIAN GAME 



193 



Destruction of Animals for Fur. — In the far North, pnly the in- 
terior of Kamchatka seems to be safe from the iron heel of the skin- 
hunter. A glance at the list of furs sold in London last year reveals one 
or two things that are disquieting. The total catch of furs for the year 
1911 is enormous, — considering the great scarcity of wild life on two 
continents. Incidentally it must be remembered that every trapper 
carries a gun, and in studying the fur list one needs no help in trying to 
imagine the havoc wrought with firearms on the edible wild life of the 
regions that contributed all that fur. I have been told by trappers that 
as a class, trappers are great killers of game. 

In order that the reader may know by means of definite figures the 
extent to which the world is being raked and combed for fur-bearing 
animals, we append below a statement copied from the Fur News Mag- 
azine for November, 1912, of the sales of the largest London fur house 
during the past two years. 

With varying emotions we call attention to the wombat of Australia, 
3,841; grebe, 51.261, and house cat, 92,407. Very nearly all the totals 
of Lampson & Co. for each species are much lower for the sales of 1912 
than for those of 1911. Is this fact significant of a steady decHne? 

Furs Sold By C. M. Lampson & Co., London 



Totals for Totals for 

igii, Skins 1912, Skins 

Raccoon 354,057 215,626 

Musquash (Muskrat) 3,382,401 2,937,150 

Musquash, Black 78,363 60,000 

Skunk 1,310,185 979,612 

Cat, Civet 329,180 229,155 

Opossum, American 1,011,824 948,189 

Mink 183,574 100,951 

Marten 29,881 26,895 

Fox, Red 58,900 40,300 

Fox, Cross 1,294 1,569 

Fox, Silver 761 590 

Fox, Grey 43,909 32,471 

Fox, Kit 30,278 35,222 

Fox, White 16,709 13,341 

Fox, Blue 3,137 1,778 

Otter 17,399 13,899 

Sea Otter 328 202 

Cat, Wild, etc 38,870 29,740 

Cat, House 92,407 65,641 

Lynx 2,424 5,144 

Fisher 1,918 656 

Badger 16,338 15,325 

Beaver 21,137 17,036 

Bear 16,851 13,377 

Wolf 65,893 74,535 

Wolverine 1,530 1,172 

Hair Seal, Dry 6,465 5,378 

Grebe 51,261 19,571 

Fur Seal, Dry 897 1,453 

Sable, Russian 10,285 8,972 



194 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 



Furs Sold By C. M. Lampson & Co., London 
(Continued) 

Totals for Totals for 

1911, Skins 1912, Skins 

Kolinsky 138,921 120,933 

Marten, Baum 1,853 1,481 

Marten, Stone 7,504 6,331 

Fitch 26,731 20,400 

Ermine 328,840 248,295 

Squirrel 976,395 707,710 

Saca, etc 40,982 13,599 

Chinchilla, Real 6,282 11,457 

Chinchilla, Bastard 7,533 8,145 

Marten, Japanese 26,005 3,294 

Sable, Japanese 1,429 52 

Fox. Japanese 60,831 13,725 

Badger, Japanese 183 2,949 

Opossum, Australian 1,613,799 1,782,364 

Wallaby, AustraHan 1,003,820 540,608 

Kangaroo, Australian 21,648 16,193 

Wombat, Australian 3,841 1,703 

Fox, Red, Australian 60,435 40,724 



CHAPTER XX 

THE DESTRUCTION OF BIRDS IN THE FAR EAST* 

By C. William Beebe 
Curator of Birds, New York Zoological Park 

In chapter XIII, treating of the " Extermination of Birds for Women's 
Hats," Dr. Hornaday has dealt fully with the feather and plumage traffic 
after it enters the brokers' hands, and has proved conclusively that the 
plumes of egrets are gathered from the freshly killed birds. We may 
trace the course of the plumes and feathers backward through the 
tightly-packed bales and boxes in the holds of the vessels to the ports 
of the savage lands whence they were shipped; then to the skilful, dark 
hands of Mexican peon, Venezuelan Indian, African negro or Asiatic 
Chinaman or Malay, who stripped the skin from the flesh; and finally 
to the jungle or mountain side or terai where the bird gave up its life 
to blowpipe, cross-bow, blunderbuss or carefully set snare. 

In various trips to Mexico, Venezuela and other countries in the 
tropics of the New World I have seen many such scenes, but not until 
I had completed a seventeen months' expedition in search of pheasants, 
through some twenty wild countries of Asia and the East Indies, did I 
realize the havoc which is being wrought week by week everywhere on 
the globe. While we were absent even these few months from the great 
centers of civilization, tremendous advances had been made in air-ships 
and the thousand and one other modern phases of human development, 
but evolution in the world of Nature as we observed it was only destruc- 
tive — a world-wide katabolism — a retrogression often discernible from 
month to month. We could scarcely repeat the trip and make the same 
observations upon pheasants, so rapidly is this group of birds approach- 
ing extinction. 

The causes of this destruction of wild life are many and diverse, and 
resemble one another only in that they all emanate from mankind. To 
the casual traveller the shooting and trapping of birds for millinery pur- 
poses at first seems to hold an insignificant place among the causes. 
But this is only because in many of the larger ports, the protective laws 
are more or less operative and the occupation of the plume hunter is 

*The observations which furnished this valuable chapter were made by Mr. Beebe 
in 1911 while conducting an expedition in southern Asia, Borneo and Java for the 
purpose of studying in Hfe and nature all the members of the Pheasant Family inhabit- 
ing that region. The results of these studies and collections will shortly appear in a 
very complete monograph of the Phasianidae. — W. T. H. 



196 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

carried on in secret ways. But it is as far-reaching and insidious as any; 
and when we add to the actual number of birds slain, the compound inter- 
est of eggs grown cold, of young birds perishing slowly from hunger, of 
the thousands upon thousands of birds which fall wounded or dead 
among the thick tropical jungle foliage and are lost, the total is one of 
ghastly proportions. 

Not to weaken my argument with too many general statements, let 
me take at once some concrete cases. First, that of the Himalayan 
pheasants and game-birds. In a recent interesting article by E. P. 
Stebbing* the past, present and hoped-for future of game birds and 
animals in India is reviewed. Unfortunately, however, most of the finest 
creatures in Asia live beyond the border of the British sphere of influence, 
and though within sight, are absolutely beyond reach of civilized law. 
The heart of the Himalayas, — the haunts of some of the most beautiful 
birds in the world, the tragopans, the blood and impeyan pheasants — 
lies within the limits of Nepal, a little country which time and time again 
has bade defiance to British attacks, and still maintains its independence. 
From its northern border Mt. Everest looks down from its most exalted 
of all earthly summits and sees valley after valley depleted of first one 
bird and then another. I have seen and lived with Nepalese shepherds 
who have nothing to do month after month but watch their flocks. In 
the lofty solitudes time hangs heavy on their hands, and with true oriental 
patience they weave loop after loop of yak-hair snares, and then set 
them, not in dozens or scores, but in hundreds and thousands up and 
down the valleys. 

In one locality seven great valleys had been completely cleared of 
pheasants, only a single pair of tragopans remaining; and from one of 
these little brown men I took two hundred nooses which had been pre- 
pared for these lone survivors. In these cases, the birds were either 
cooked and eaten at once, or sold to some passing shepherd or lama for a 
few annas. But in other parts of this unknown land systematic collect- 
ing of skins goes on, for bale after bale of impeyan and red argus (tra- 
gopan) pheasant skins goes down to the Calcutta wharves, where its 
infamous contents, though known, are safe from seizure under the Nepal 
Raja's seal! Thus it is that the London feather sales still list these 
among the most splendid of all living birds. And shame upon shame, 
when we read of 80 impeyan skins "dull," or "slightly defective," we 
know that these are female birds. Then, if ever, we realize that the time 
of the bird and the beast is passing, the acme of evolution for these 
wonderful beings is reached, and at most we can preserve only a small 
fragment of them. 

To the millinery hunter, what the egret is to America, and the bird 
of paradise to New Guinea, the impeyan pheasant is to India — the most 
coveted of all plumages. There is a great tendency to blame the native 
hunter for the decrease of this and other pheasants, and from what I have 
personally seen in many parts of the Himalayas there is no question that 

*"Game Sanctuaries and Game Protection in India," Proc. Zool. Soc, London, 
1912. pp. 23-35. 



DESTRUCTION OF BIRDS IN THE FAR EAST 



197 




PHEASAXT SNARES 

Made of Yak Hair, Taken from a Shepherd in Nepal 

by Mr. Beebe 



the Garwhalese and Nepalese 
hill-men have wrought havoc 
among the birds. But these 
men are by no means the sole 
cause. As long ago as 1879 we 
read that " The great demand 
for the brilliant skins of the 
moonal that has existed for 
many years has led to their 
almost total extermination in 
some parts of the hills, as the 
native shikaris shoot and snare 
for the pot as well as for skins, 
and kill as many females as 
males. On the other hand, 
though for nearly thirty years 
my friend Mr. Wilson has 
yearly sent home from 1,000 
to 1,500 skins of this species 
and the tragopan, there are 
still in the woods whence they 
were obtained as many as, if 
not more than, when he first 
entered them, simply because he has rigidly preserved females and nests, 
and (as amongst English pheasants) one cock suffices for several hens." 
Ignoring the uncertainty of the last statement, it is rather absurd to 
think of a single man "preserving" females and nests in the Himalayas 
from 1850 to 1880, when the British Government, despite most efficient 
laws and worthy efforts is unable to protect the birds of these wild re- 
gions to-day. The statement that after thirty to forty-five thousand 
cock impeyans were shot or snared, as many or more than the original 
quota remained, could only emanate from the mind of a professional 
feather-hunter, and Hume should not be blamed for more than the mere 
repetition of such figures. Let it be said to the credit of Wilson, the 
slaughterer of something near forty-five thousand impeyans, that he was 
a careful observer of the birds' habits, and has given us an excellent 
account, somewhat coloured by natives, but on the whole, the best we 
have had in the past. But it is not pleasant to read of his waiting until 
"twenty or thirty have got up and ahghted in the surrounding trees, and 
have then walked up to the different trees and fired at those I wished to 
procure without alarming the rest, only those very close to the one fired 
at being disturbed at each report." 

Hume's opinion that in 1879 there were scores of places where one 
might secure from ten to eighteen birds in a day, is certainly not true 
to-day. Indeed, as early as 1858 we read that "This splendid bird, once 
so abundant on the Western Himalayas is now far from beng so, in 
consequence of the numbers killed by sportsmen on account of its beauty. 
Whole tracts of mountain forest once frequented by the moonal are now 



198 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 




SILVER PHEASANT SKINS SEIZED AT RANGOON, BRITISH BURMA 

About 600 Skins out of Several Thousand Confiscated in the Custom House, on their way to the 

London Feather Market. Photographed by Mr. Beebe 



almost without a single specimen." The same aiithor goes on naively 
to tell the reader that "Among the most pleasant reminiscences of by- 
gone days is a period of eleven days, spent by the author and a friend 
on the Choor Mountain near Simla, when among other trophies were 
numbered sixty-eight moonal pheasants, etc." 

For some unaccountable reason there is, or was for many years, a 
very prevalent idea that the enormous number of skins which have poured 
into the London market were from birds bred in the vicinity of Calcutta. 
When we remember the intense heat of that low-lying city, and learn 
from the records of the Calcutta Zoological Garden that impeyans and 
tragopans are even shorter-lived than in Europe, the absurdity of the 
idea is apparent. In spite of numberless inquiries throughout India, I 
failed to learn of a single captive young bird ever hatched and reared 
even in the high, cool, hill-stations. The commercial value of an impeyan 
skin has varied from five dollars to twenty dollars, according to the num- 
ber received annually. In 1876 an estimate placed the monthly average 
of impeyans received in London at from two to eight hundred. 

In such a case as Nepal, direct protective laws are of no avail. All 
humane arguments are useless, but if the markets aJ: the other end can 
be closed, the slaughter will cease instantly and automatically. 



DESTRUCTION OF BIRDS IN THE FAR EAST 199 




DEADFALL TRAPS IN BURMA 

A Long Series set Across a Valley, by the Kachins of the Burma-Chinese Border. A Wholesale 
Method of Wild-life Slaughter, Photographed by C. William Beebe, 1910 

As a contrast to the milliner}' hunter of fifty years ago it is refreshing 
to find that at last sincere efforts are being made in British possessions 
to stop this traffic. I happened to be at Rangoon when six large bales 
of pheasant skins were seized by the Custom officials. A Chinaman had 
brought them from Yunnan via Bhamo, and was preparing to ship them 
as ducks' feathers. Two of the bales were opened for my inspection. 
The first contained about five hundred Lady Amherst pheasant skins, 
falling to pieces and lacking heads and legs. The second held over four 
hundred silver pheasants, in almost perfect condition. The chief collector 
had put the absolutely prohibitive fine of £200 on them, and was waiting 
for the expiration of the legal number of days before burning the entire 
lot. They must have represented years of work in decimating the 
pheasant fauna of western China. 

Far up in the wilderness of northern Burma, and over the Yunnan 
border, we often came upon some of the most ingenious examples of 
native trapping, a system which we found repeated in the Malay States, 
Borneo, China and other parts of the Far East. A low bamboo fence is 
built directly across a steep valley or series of valleys, about half way 
from the summit to the lower end, and about every fifteen feet a narrow 
opening is left, over which a heavy log is suspended. Any creature 
attempting to make its way through, treads upon several small sticks 
and by so doing springs the trap and the dead-fall claims a victim. 



200 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

When a country is systematically strung with traps such as these, sooner 
or later all but a pitiful remnant of the smaller mammals, birds and 
reptiles are certain to be wiped out. Morning after morning I have 
visited such a runway and found dead along its path, what must have 
been all the walking, running or crawling creatures which the night 
before had sought the water at the bottom; pheasants, cobras, mouse- 
deer, rodents, civets, and members of many other groups. In some 
countries nooses instead of dead-falls guard the openings, but the result 
is equally deadly. 

I have described this method of trapping because of its future im- 
portance in the destruction of wild life in the Far East. The Chinaman 
in all his many millions is undergoing a remarkably swift and radical 
evolution both of character and dress. In many ways, if only from the 
viewpoint of the patient, thrifty store-keeper he is a most powerful 
factor in the East, and is becoming more so. In many cases he imitates 
the white nations by cutting off his queue and altering his dress. In 
some mysterious correlated way his diet seems simultaneously affected, 
and while for untold generations rice and fish has satisfied all his gas- 
tronomic desires, a new craving, that for meat, has come to him. The 
result is apparent in many parts of the East. The Chinaman is willing 
and able to pay for meat, and the native finds a new market for the 
creatures about him. Again and again when I wished a few specimens of 
some certain pheasant I had but to hail passing canoes and bid a few 
annas or "cash" or "ringits" higher than the prospective Chinese pur- 
chaser would give, and the pheasants were mine. 

In the catalogues of the brokers' sales of feathers we read of many 
thousands of the wonderful ocellated wing feathers of the argus pheasant, 
but no less horrible is the sight of a canoe crammed with the bedraggled 
bodies of these magnificent birds on their way to some Chinese hamlet 
where they will be sold for a pittance, the flesh eaten to the last tendon 
and the feathers given to the children and puppies to play with. The 
newly-aroused appetite of the Mongolian will soon be an important 
factor in the extermination of animals and birds, few species being exempt, 
for the Chinaman lives up to his reputation and is not squeamish as to 
the nature of his meat. 

Before we leave the subject of Chinamen let us consider another 
recent factor in the destruction of wild life which is at present widely 
operative in China itself. This is the cold storage warehouse, of which 
six or eight enormous ones have gone up in different parts of the East. 
To speak in detail only of the one at Hankow, six hundred miles up the 
Yangtze, we found it to be the largest structure in the city. Surrounded 
by a high wall, with each entrance and exit guarded by armed Sikhs, 
it seemed like the feudal castle of some medieval baron. Why such 
secrecy is necessary I could not learn, as there are no laws against its 
business. But so carefully guarded is its premises that until a short 
time ago even the British consul-general of Hankow had not been allowed 
to enter. He, however, at last refused to sign the papers for any more 



DESTRUCTION OF BIRDS IN THE FAR EAST 201 

outgoing shipments until he should be allowed to see what was going on 
within the warehouse. I hoped to be able to look over some of the 
frozen pheasants for interesting scientific material, but of course was not 
allowed to do so. 

Although here in the heart of China, outside changes are not felt so 
strongly and the newly-acquired meat diet of the border and emigrant 
Chinese is hardly apparent, these warehouses have opened up a new 
source of revenue, which has met with instant response. Thousands 
and tens of thousands of wild shot or trapped pheasants and other birds 
are now brought to these establishments by the natives from far and 
near. The birds are frozen, and twice a year shipped on specially re- 
frigerated P. and O. steamships to England and the continent of Europe 
where they seem' to find a ready sale. Pigs and chickens also figure in 
the shipments. Now the pheasants have for centuries existed in enormous 
numbers in the endless ricefields of China, without doing any damage 
to the crops. In fact they could not be present in such numbers without 
being an important factor in keeping down insect and other enemies 
of the grain. When their numbers are decimated as they are being at 
present, there must eventually result a serious upsetting of the balance 
of nature. Let us hope that in some way this may be avoided, and that 
the present famine deaths of thirty thousand or more in some provinces 
will not be increased many fold. 

When I started on this search for pheasants I was repeatedly told 
by old explorers in the east that my task would be very different from 
theirs of thirty years ago; that I would find steamers, railroads and 
automobiles where formerly were only canoes and jungle. I indeed fotmd 
this as reported, but while my task was difi'erent it was made no easier. 
Formerly, to be sure, one had from the start to paddle slowly or push 
along the trails made by natives or game animals. But then the wild 
life was encountered at once, while I found it always far from the end of 
the steamer's route or the railroad's terminal, and still to be reached 
only by the most primitive modes of travel. 

I cite this to give point to my next great cause of destruction; the 
burning and clearing of vast stretches of country for the planting of 
rubber trees. The East seems rubber mad, and whether the enormous 
output which will result from the millions of trees set out month after 
month will be profitable, I cannot say. I can think only of the vanish- 
ing of the entire fauna and flora of many districts which I have seen as a 
direct result of this commercial activity. One leaves Port Swcttenham 
on the west coast of Selangor, and for the hour's run to Kuala Lumpur 
sees hardly anything but vast radiating lines of spindling rubber trees, 
all underbrush cleared, all native growths vanished. From Kuala Lum- 
pur to Kuala Kubu at the very foot of the mountain backbone of the 
Malay Peninsula, the same holds true. And where some area appears 
not under cultivation, the climbing fern and a coarse, useless "lalang" 
grass covers every inch of ground. One can hardly imagine a more 
complete blotting out of the native fauna and flora of any one limited 



202 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

region. And ever-extending roads for the increasing motor cars are 
widening the cleared zone, mile after mile to the north and south. 

In this region, as we pushed on over the mountains into the wilderness 
of Pahang, we saw little of the actual destruction of the primeval native 
growth, but elsewhere it became a common sight. Once, for many days 
we studied the wonderful life of a jungle which stretched up to our very 
camp. Troops of rollicking wa-was or gibbons frequented the forest; 
squirrels, tupaias, birds and insects in myriads were everywhere during 
the day. Great fruit-bats, flying lemurs, owls and other nocturnal 
creatures made the evenings and nights full of interest. 

And then, one day without warning came the sound of an ax, and 
another and another. From that moment the songs, cries, chirps and 
roars of the jungle were seldom heard from our camp. Every day saw 
new phalanxes of splendid primeval trees fallen, or half suspended in 
their rigging of lianas. The leaves withered, the flower petals fell and 
we heard no more the crackling of bamboos in the wind. Then the 
pitiful survivors of the destruction were brought to us; now a baby 
flying lemur, flung from its hole by the falling of some tree; young 
tupaias, nestling birds; a few out of the thousands of creatures from 
insects to mammals which were slain so that a Chinaman or Malay might 
eke a few dollars, four or five years hence, from a grove of rubber trees. 
I do not say it is wrong. Man has won out, and might is right, as since 
the dawn of creation; but to the onlooker, to the lover of nature and the 
animal world it is a terrible, a hopeless thing. 

One cannot at present leave the tourist line of travel in the East 
without at once encountering evidence of the wholesale direct slaughter 
of wild life, or its no less certain extermination by the elimination of the 
haunts and the food plants of the various beasts and birds. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE SAVAGE VIEW-POINT OF THE GUNNER 

The mental attitude of the men who shoot constitutes a deadly factor 
in the destruction of wild life and the extermination of species. Fully 
ninety-five per cent of the sportsmen, gunners and other men and boys 
who kill game, all over the world and in all nations, regard game birds 
and mammals only as things to be killed and eaten, and not as creatures 
worth preserving for their beauty or their interest to mankind. This is 
precisely the viewpoint of the cave-man and the savage, and it has come 
down from the Man-with-a-Club to the Man-with-a-Gun absolutely un- 
changed save for one thing: the latter sometimes is prompted to save 
to-day in order to slaughter to-morrow. 

The above statement of an existing fact may seem harsh; and some 
persons may be startled by it; but it is based on an acquaintance with 
thousands of men who shoot all kinds of game, all over the world. My 
critics surely will admit that my opportunities to meet the sportsmen and 
gunners of the world are, and for thirty-five years have been, rather 
favorable. As a matter of fact, I think the efforts of the hunters of my 
personal acquaintance have covered about seven-tenths of the hunting 
grounds of the world. If the estimate that I have formed of the average 
hunter's viewpoint is wrong, or even partially so, I will be glad to have 
it proven in order that I may reform my judgment and apologize. 

In working with large bodies of bird-shooting sportsmen I have 
steadily — and also painfully — been impressed by their intentness on 
killing, and by the fact that they seek to preserve game only to kill it! Who 
ever saw a bird-shooter rise in a convention and advocate the preserva- 
tion of any species of game bird on account of its beauty or its esthetic 
interest alivef I never did; and I have sat in many conventions of 
sportsmen. All the talk is of open seasons, bag limits and killing rights. 
The man who has the hardihood to stand up and propose a five-year 
close season has "a hard row to hoe." Men rise and say: "It's all 
nonsense! There's plenty of quail shooting on Long Island yet." 

Throughout the length and breadth of America, the ruling passion is 
to kill as long as anything killable remains. The man who will openly 
advocate the stopping of quail-shooting because the quails are of such 
great value to the farmers, or because they are so beautiful and compan- 
ionable to man, receives no sympathy from ninety per cent of the bird- 
killing sportsmen. The remaining ten per cent think seriously about 
the matter, and favor long close seasons. It is my impression that of 
the men who shoot, it is only among the big-game hunters that we find 



204 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

much genuine admiration for game animals, or any feeling remotely 
resembling regard for it. 

The moment that a majority of American gunners concede the fact 
that game birds are worth preserving for their beauty, and their value as 
living neighbors to man, from that moment there is hope for the saving 
of the Remnant. That will indeed be the beginning of a new era, of a 
millennium in fact, in the preservation of wild life. It will then be easy 
to enact laws for ten-year close seasons on whole groups of species. Think 
what it would mean for such a close season to be enacted for all the 
grouse of the United States, all the shore-birds of the United States, or 
the wild turkey wherever found! 

To-day, the great — indeed, the only — opponents of long close seasons 
on game birds are the gunners. Whenever and wherever you introduce 
a bill to pro\dde such a season, you will find that this is true. The gun 
clubs and the Downtrodden Hunters' and Anglers' Protective Associa- 
tions will be quick to go after their representatives, and oppose the bill. 
And state senators and assemblymen will think very hard and with 
strong courage before they deliberately resolve to do their duty regard- 
less of the opposition of "a large body of sportsmen," — men who have 
votes, and who know how to take revenge on lawmakers who deprive 
them of their "right" to kill. The greatest speech ever made in the 
Mexican Congress was uttered by the member who solemnly said: "I 
rise to sacrifice ambition to honor!" 

Unfortunately, the men who shoot have become possessed of the idea 
that they have certain inherent, God-given "rights " to kill game! Now, 
as a matter of fact, a sportsman with a one-hundred-dollar Fox gun in his 
hands, a two-hundred-dollar dog at his heels and five one-hundred-dollar 
bills in his pocket has no more "right" to kill a covey of quail on Long 
Island than my milkman has to elect that it shall be let alone for the 
pleasure of his children! The time has come when the people who don't 
shoot must do one of two things: 

1. They must demonstrate the fact that they have rights in the 

wild creatures, and demand their recognition, or 

2. See the killable game all swept off the continent by the Army 

of Destruction. 

Really, it is to me very strange that gUDners never care to save game 
birds on account of their beauty. One living bob white on a fence is 
better than a score in a bloody game-bag. A live squirrel in a tree is 
poetry in motion ; but on the table a squirrel is a rodent that tastes as a 
rat smells. Beside the ocean a flock of sandpipers is needed to complete 
the beautiful picture; but on the table a sandpiper is beneath contempt. 
A live deer trotting over a green meadow, waving a triangular white flag, 
is a sight to thrill any human ganglion; but a deer lying dead, — unless it 
has an exceptionally fine head, — is only so much butcher's meat. 

One of the finest sights I ever saw in Montana was a big flock of sage 
grouse slowly stalking over a grassy flat thinly sprinkled with sage-brush. 
It was far more inspiring than any pile of dead birds that I ever saw. 



206 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

I remember scores of beautiful game birds that I have seen and not 
killed ; but of all the game birds that I have eaten or tried to eat in New 
York, I remember with sincere pleasure only one. Some of the ancient 
cold-storage candidates I remember "for cause," as the lawyers say. 

Sportsmen and gunners, for God's sake elevate your viewpoint of the 
game of the world. Get out of the groove in which man has run ever 
since the days of Adam! There is something in a game bird over and 
above its pound of flesh. You don't "need" the meat any longer; for 
you don't know what hunger is, save by reading of it. Try the field- 
glass and the camera, instead of the everlasting gun. Any fool can take 
a five-dollar gun and kill a bird ; but it takes a genius to photograph one 
wild bird and get "a good one." As hunters, the camera men have the 
best of it. One good live-bird photograph is more of a trophy and a 
triumph than a bushel of dead birds. The birds and mammals now are 
literally dying for your help in the making of long close seasons, and in 
the real stoppage of slaughter. Can you not hear the call of the wild 
remnant ? 

It is time for the people who don't shoot to call a halt on those who 
do; "and if this be treason, then let my enemies make the most of it!" 

Since the above was written, I have read in the Outdoor World for 
April, 1912, the views of a veteran sportsman and writer, Mr. Emerson 
Hough, on the wild-life situation as it seems to him to-day. It is a strong 
utterance, even though it reaches a pessimistic and gloomy conclusion 
which I do not share. Altogether, however, its breadth of view, its gen- 
eral accuracy, and its incisiveness, entitle it to a full hearing. The follow- 
ing is only an extract from a lengthy article entitled, "God's Acre:" 

EMERSON HOUGH'S VIEW OF THE SITUATION 

The truth is none the less the truth because it is unpleasant to face. There is no 
well posted sportsman in America, no manufacturer of sporting goods in America, no 
man well versed in American outdoor matters, who does not know that we are at the 
evening of the day of open sport in America. Our old ways have failed, all of them 
have failed. The declining fortunes of the best sportsman's journals of America would 
prove that, if proof were asked. Our sportsmanship has failed. Our game laws have 
failed, and we know they have failed. Our game is almost gone, and we know it is 
almost gone. America has changed and we know that it has changed, although we 
have not changed with it. The old America is done and it is gone, and we know that 
to be the truth. The old order passeth, and we know that the new order must come 
soon if it is to work any salvation for our wild game and our life in the open in pursuit 
of it. 

There are man}'' reasons for this fact, these facts. Perhaps the greatest lies in the 
steady advance of civilization into the wilderness, the usurpation for agricultural or 
industrial use of many of the ancient breeding and feeding places of the wild game. 
All over the West and" now all over Canada, the plow advances, that one engine which 
cannot be gainsaid, which never turns a backward furrow. 

Another great agency is the rapid perfection of transportation all over the world. 
Take the late influx of East African literature. If there really were not access to that 
country we would not have this literature, would not have so many pictures from that 
country. And if even Africa will soon be overrun, if even Africa soon will be shot out, 
what hope is there for the game of the wholly accessible No'th American continent? 

It is all too easy now for the slaughterer to get to his work, all too easy for him to 



SAVAGE VIEW-POINT OF THE GUNNER 207 

transport the fruits of the slaughter. At the hands of the ignorant, the unscrupulous 
and the unsparing, our game has steadily disappeared until it is almost gone. We have 
handled it in a wholly greedy, unscrupulous and selfish fashion. This has been our 
policy as a nation. If there is to be success for any plan to remedy this, it must come 
from a few large-minded men, able to think and plan, and able to do more than that— 
to follow their plans with deeds. 

I have seen the whole story of modern American sportsmanship, so called. It has 
been class legislation and organized selfishness — that is what it has been, and notning 
else. I do not blame country legislators, game dealers, farmers, for calling the srorts- 
men of America selfish and thoughtless. I do not blame them for saying that the 
so-called protective measures advanced by sportsmen have been selfish measures, and 
looking to destruction rather than to protection. At least that has been their actual 
result. I have no more reverence for a sportsman than for anyone else, and no reverence 
for him at all because he is or calls himself a sportsman. He has got to be a man. He 
has got to be a citizen. 

I have seen millions of acres of breeding and feeding grounds pass under the drain 
and under the plow in my own time, so that the passing whispc" of the wild fowl's wing 
has been forgotten there now for many years. I have seen a half dozen species of fine 
game birds become extinct in my own time and lost forever to the American people. 

And j^ou and I have seen one protective society after another, languidly organised, 
paying in a languid dollar or so per capita each yea^, and so swiftly passing, also to be 
forgotten. We have seen one code and the other of conflicting and wholly selfish game 
laws passed, and seen them mocked at and forgotten, seen them all fail, as we all know. 

We have seen even the nation's power — under that Ark of the Covenant known 
as the Interstate Commerce Act — fail to stop wholly the lessening of our wild game, 
so rapidly disappearing for so many reasons. 

We have seen both selfish and unselfish sportsmen's journals attempt to solve 
this problem and fail to do so. Some of them were great and broad-minded journals. 
Their record has not been one of disgrace, although it has been one of defeat; for some 
of them really desired success more than they desired dividends. These, all of them, 
bore their share of a great experiment, an experiment in a new land, under a new theory 
of government, a theoi-y which says a man should be able to restrain himself, and to 
govern himself. Only by following their theory through to the end of that experiment 
could they know that it was to fail in one of its most vitally interesting and vitally 
important phases. 

But now, as we know, all of these agencies, selfish or unselfish, have failed to effect 
the salvation of American wild game. Not by any scheme, device, or theory, not by 
any panacea can the old days of America be brought back to us. 

Mr. Hough's views are entitled to respectful consideration; but on 
one vital point I do not follow him. 

I believe most sincerely — in fact, / know, — that it is possible to make 
a few new laws which, in addition to the many, many good protective 
laws we already have, will bring back the game, just as fast and as far as 
man's settlements, towns, railroads, mines and schemes in general ever 
can permit it to come back. 

If the American People as a whole elect that our wild life shall be 
saved, and to a reasonable extent brought back, then by the Eternal it 
will be saved and brought back! The road lies straight before us, and 
the going is easy — if the Mass makes up its mind to act. But on one 
vital point Mr. Hough is right. The sportsman alone never will save the 
game! The people who do not kill must act, independently. 



PART IL— PRESERVATION 

CHAPTER XXII 
OUR ANNUAL LOSSES BY INSECTS 

"You take my life when you do take the means whereby I Uve." 

"In no country in the world," says Mr. C. L. Marlatt, of the U. S. 
Department of Agriculture, "do insects impose a heavier tax on farm 
products than in the United States." These attacks are based upon an 
enormous and varied annual output of cereals and fruits, and a great 
variety and number of trees. For every vegetable-eating insect, native 
and foreign, we seem to have crops, trees and plant food galore ; and their 
ravages rob the market-basket and the dinner-pail. In 1912 there 
were riots in the streets of New York over the high cost of food. 

In 1903, this state of fact was made the subject of a special inquiry 
\ by the Department of Agriculture, and in the "Yearbook" for 1904, the 
reader will find, on page 461, an article entitled, "The Annual Loss Occa- 
sioned by Destructive Insects in the United States." The article is not 
of the sensational type, it was not written in an alarmist spirit, but from 
beginning to end it is a calm, cold-blooded analysis of existing facts, and 
the conclusions that fairly may be drawn from them. The opinions of 
several experts have been considered and quoted, and often their inde- 
pendent figures are stated. 

With the disappearance of our birds generally, and especially the 
slaughter of song and other insect-eating birds both in the South and 
North, the destruction of the national wealth by insects forges to the 
front as a subject of vital importance. The logic of the situation is 
so simple a child can see it. Short crops mean higher prices. If ten 
per cent of our vegetable food supply is destroyed by insects, as certain 
as fate we will feel it in the increased cost of living. 

I would like to place Mr. Marlatt's report in the hands of every man, 
boy and school-teacher in America; but I have not at my disposal the 
means to accomplish such a task. I cannot even print it here in full, but 
the vital facts can be stated, briefly and in plain figures. 

Crops and Insects. 

Corn. — The principal insect enemies of corn are the chinch bug, 
corn-root worm (Diabrotica longicornis) , bill bug, wire worm, boll-worm 



Ol'R ANNUAL LOSSES BY INSECTS 



209 




THE CUT-WORM, (Peridrotna sancia) 
Very Destructive to Crops 



or ear-wurm, cut-worm, army worm, stalk worm, grasshopper, and plant 
lice, in all a total of about fifty important species ! Several of these pests 
work secretly. At husking time the wretched ear-worm that ruins the 
terminal quarter or fifth of an immense number of ears, is painfully in 
evidence. The root-worms work insidiously, and the moles and shrews 
are supposed to attack them and destroy them. The corn-root worm is 
charged with causing an annual loss of two per cent of the corn crop, or 
$20,000,000; the chinch bug another two per cent; the boll or ear-worm 
two per cent more. The remaining insect pests are charged with two 
per cent, which makes eight per cent in all, or a total of $80,000,000 
lost each year to the American farmer through the ravages of insects. 
This is not evenly distributed, but some areas suffer more than others. 

Wheat. — Of all our cereal crops, wheat is the one that suffers most 
from insects. There are three insects that cause to the wheat industry 



210 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

an annual loss of about ten per cent. The chinch bug is the worst, and it is 
charged with five per cent ($20,000,000) of the total loss. The Hessian 
fly conies next in order, and occasionally rolls up enormous losses. In 
the year 1900, that insect caused to Indiana and Ohio alone the loss of 
2,577,000 acres of wheat, and the total cost to us of that insect in that 
year "undoubtedly approached $100,000,000." Did that affect the price 
of wheat or not? If not, then there is no such thing as a "law of supply 
and demand." 

Wheat plant-lice form collectively the third insect pest destructive to 
wheat, of which it is reported that "the annual loss occasioned by wheat 
plant-lice probably does not fall short of two or three per cent of the crop. ' ' 

Hay and Forage Crops. — These are attacked by locusts, grasshop- 
pers, army worms, cut-worms, web worms, small grass worms and leaf 
hoppers. Some of these pests are so small and work so insidiously that 
even the farmer is prone to overlook their existence. "A ten per cent 
shrinkage from these and other pests in grasses and forage plants is a 
minimum estimate." 

Cotton. — The great enemies of the cotton-planter are the cotton 
boll weevil, the bollworm and the leaf worm; but other insects inflict 
serious damage. In 1904 the loss occasioned by the boll weevil, chiefly 
in Texas, was conservatively estimated by an expert, Mr. W. D. Hunter, 
at $20,000,000. The boll worm of the southwestern cotton states has 
sometimes caused an annual loss of $12,000,000, or four per cent of the 
crops in the states affected. Before the use of arsenical poisons, the 
leaf worm caused an annual loss of from twenty to thirty million dollars ; 
but of late years that total has been greatly reduced. 

Fruits. — The insects that reduce our annual fruit crop attack every 
portion of the tree and its product. The woolly aphis attacks the roots 
of the fruit tree, the trunk and limbs are preyed upon by millions of scale 
insects and borers, the leaves are devastated by the all-devouring leaf 
worms, canker worms and tent caterpillars, while the fruit itself is at- 
tacked by the codling moth, curculio and apple maggot. To destroy 
fruit is to take money out of the farmer's pocket, and to attack and 
injure the tree is like undermining his house itself. By an annual ex- 
penditure of about $8,250,000 in cash for spraying apple trees, the 
destructiveness of the codling moth and curculio have been greatly re- 
duced, but that money is itself a cash loss. Add to this the $12,000,000 
of actual shrinkage in the apple crop, and the total annual loss to our 
apple-growers due to the codling moth and curculio is about $20,000,000. 
In the high price of apples, a part of this loss falls upon the consumer. 

In 1889 Professor Forbes calculated that the annual loss to the fruit- 
growers of Illinois from insect ravages was $2,375,000. In 1892, insects 
caused to Nebraska apple-growers a loss computed at $2,000,000 and, in 
1897, New York farmers lost $2,500,000 from that cause. "In many 
sections of the Pacific Northwest the loss was from fifty to seventy-five 
per cent." (Yearbook, page 470.) 

Forests. — "The annual losses occasioned by insect jjests to forests 



OUR ANNUAL LOSSES BY INSECTS 



211 




PUPA 

(Chrysalis; 



THE GYPSY MOTH, (Fortheria dispur) 
Very Destructive to the Finest Shade Trees 

and forest products (in the United States) have been estimated by Dr. 
A. D. Hopkins, special agent in charge of forest insect investigations, at 
not less than $100,000,000. * * * j^ covers both the loss from insect 
damages to standing timber, and to the crude and manufactured forest 
products. The annual loss to growing timber is conservativelv placed 
at $70,000,000." 



212 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 



There are other insect damages that we will not pause to enumerate 
here. They relate to cattle, horses, sheep and stored grain products of 
many kinds. Even cured tobacco has its pest, a minute insect known 
as the cigarette beetle, now widespread in America and "frequently the 
cause of very heavy losses." 

The millions of the insect world are upon us. Their cost to us has 
been summed up by Mr. Marlatt in the table that appears below. 

Annual Values of Farm Products, and Losses Chargeable 

TO Insect Pests. 



official Report in the Yearbook of the Department 


of Agriculture, 


1904. 


PRODUCT 


value 


percentage 

OF LOSS 


amount OF 
LOSS 


Cereals 


#2,000,000,000 
530,000,000 
600,000,000 

53,000,000 
265,000,000 

50,000,000 
135,000,000 
110,000,000 

58,000,000 


10 
10 
10 
10 
20 
10 
20 
10 
10 

10 


■S200,000 000 


Hay 


53,000,000 


Cotton 


60.000,000 


Tobacco 


5,300,000 


Truck Crops 


53,000,000 


Sugars 


5,000,000 


Fruits 


27,000,000 


Farm Forests 


11,000,000 


Miscellaneous Crops 


5,800,000 






Total 


#3,801,000,000 
1,750,000,000 


#420,100,000 

175,000,000 
100,000,000 


Animal Products 


Natural Forests and Forest Products. . . 


Products in Storage 




100,000 000 








Grand Total 


#5,551,000,000 


#795,100 000 







The millions of the insect world are upon us. The birds fight them 
for us, and when the birds are numerous and have nestlings to feed, the 
number of insects they consume is enormous. They require absolutely 
nothing at our hands save the privilege of being let alone while they work 
for us! In fighting the insects, our only allies in nature are the song- 
birds, woodpeckers, shore-birds, swallows and martins, certain hawks, 
moles, shrews, bats, and a few other living creatures. All these wage 
war at their own expense. The farmers might just as well lose $8,250,000 
through a short apple crop as to pay out that sum in labor and materials 
in spraying operations. And yet, fools that we are, we go on slaughtering 
our friends, and allowing others to slaughter them, under the same brand 
of fatuous folly that leads the people of Italy to build anew on the smok- 
ing sides of Vesuvius, after a dozen generations have been swept away 
by fire and ashes. 

In the next chapter we will consider the work of our friends, The Birds. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 
THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS 

To-day, from Halifax to Los Angeles, and from Key West to Victoria, 
a deadly contest is being waged. The fruit-growers, farmers, forest owners 
and "park people" are engaged in a struggle with the insect hordes for 
the possession of the trees, shrubs and crops. Go out into the open, with 
your eyes open, and you will see it for yourself. Millions of dollars are 
being expended in it. Look at this exhibit of what is going on around 
me, at this very moment, — July 19, 1912: 

The bag insects, in thousands, are devouring the leaves of locust and 
maple trees. 

The elm beetles are trying to devour the elms; and spraying is in 
progress. 

The hickory-bark borers are slaughtering the hickories; and even 
some park people are neglecting to take the measures necessary to stop it ! 

The tent caterpillars are being burned. 

The aphis (scale insects) are devouring the tops of the white potatoes 
in the New York University school garden, just as the potato beetle does. 

The codling moth larvae are already at work on the apples. 

The leaves affected by the witch hazel gall fly are being cut ofi" and 
burned. 

These are merely the most conspicuous of the insect pests that I now 
see daily. I am not counting those of second or third-rate importance. 

Some of these hordes are being fought with poisonous sprays, some 
are being killed by hand, and some are being ignored. 

In view of the known value of the remaining trees of our country, each 
woodpecker in the United States is worth twenty dollars in cash. Each 
nuthatch, creeper and chickadee is worth from five to ten dollars, accord- 
ing to local circumstances. You might just as well cut down four twenty- 
inch trees and let them lie and decay, as to permit one woodpecker 
to be killed and eaten by an Italian in the North, or a negro in the South. 
The downy woodpecker is the relentless enemy of the codling moth, an 
insect that annually inflicts upon our apple crop damages estimated by 
the experts of the U. S. Department of Agriculture at twelve million 
dollars ! 

Now, is a federal strong-arm migratory bird law needed for such 
birds or not ? Let the owners of orchards and forests make answer. 

The Case of the Codling Moth and Curculio. — The codling 
moth and curculio are twin terrors to apple-growers, partly because of 



{/ 



214 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 



their deadly destmctiveness, 
and partly because man is 
so weak in resisting them. 
The annual cost of the fight 
made against them, in sprays 
and labor and apparatus, has- 
been estimated at $8,250,000. 
And what do the birds do to 
the codling moth, ■ — when 
there are any birds left alive 
to operate? The testimony 
)%. comes from all over the 

United States, and it is worth 
while to cite it briefly as a 
fair sample of the work of 
the birds upon this particu- 
larly deadly pest. These 
facts and quotations are from 
the "Yearbook of the De- 
]3artment of Agriculture," 
for 1911. 

The Downy Woodpecker 
is the champion tree-protec- 
tor, and also one of the 
greatest enemies of the cod- 
ling moth. When man is 
quite unable to find the hid- 
den larvae. Downy locates 
it every time, and digs it 
out. It extracts worms from 
young apples so skillfully 
that often the fruit is not permanently injured. Mr. F. M. Webster re- 
ports that the labors of this bird "afford actual and immediate relief to 
the infected fruit." Testimony in favor of the downy woodpecker has 
come from New York, New Jersey, Texas and California, "and no fewer 
than twenty larvae have been taken from a single stomach." 

Take the Red-Shafted Flicker vs. the codling moth. Mr. A. P. Martin, 
of Petaluma, Cal., states that during the early spring months (of 1890) 
they were seen by hundreds in his orchard, industriously examining the 
trunks and larger limbs of the fruit trees ; and he also found great num- 
bers of them around sheds where he stored his winter apples and pears. 
As the result of several hours' search, Mr. Martin found only one worm, 
and this one escaped only by accident, for several of the birds had been 
within a quarter of an inch of it. "So eager are woodpeckers in search 
of codling moths that they have often been known to riddle the shingle 
traps and paper bands which are placed to attract the larvae about to 
spin cocoons. 




DOWNY WOODPECKER 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS 215 

Behold the array of birds that devour the larvae of the codling moth 
to an important extent. 

Birds that Devour the Codling Moth 

Downy Woodpecker {Dryobates pubescens) . 
Hairy Woodpecker {Dryobates villosus). 
Texan Woodpecker {Dryobates scalaris bairdi). 
Red-Headed Woodpecker (Melaverpes erythrocephalus). 
Red-Shafted Flicker {Colaptes cafer coUaris). 
Pileated Woodpecker (Phloeotomus pileatus). 
Kingbird {Tyrraniis tyrranns). 

Western Yellow- Bellied Flycatcher {Empidonax difficilis). 
Blue Jay {Cyanocitta cristata). 
California Jay {A phelocoma calif arnica). 
Magpie {Pica pica httdsonia). 
Crow Blackbird {Qiiiscalns quiscula). 
Brewer Blackbird {Enphagtis cyanocephalus). 
Bullock Oriole {Icterus bidlocki). 
English Sparrow {Passer domesticus). 
Chipping Sparrow {Spizella passerina). 
California Towhee {Pipilo crissalis). 
Cardinal {Cardinalis cardinalis). 
Black Headed Grosbeak {Zamelodia melanocephaJa). 
Lazuli Bunting {Passerina cyanea). 
Barn Swallow {Ilirundo erythrogastra). 
Western Warbling Vireo {Vireosylva gilva s-ixuinsoni) . 
vSummer, or Yellow Warbler {Dendroica aestiva). 
Lutescent Warbler {Vermivora celata lutescens). 
Brown Creeper {Certhia familiaris americana). 
White-Breasted Nuthatch {Sifta carolinensis). 
Black-Capped Chickadee {Penthestes atricapilliis). 
Plain Titmouse {Baeolophus inornatus). 
, CavoVma. Chicl^adee {Pe^ithestes carolinensis). 

Mountain Chickadee {Penthestes gambeli). 
California Bush Tit [Psaltriparns minimus calif amicus). 
Ruby-Crowned Kinglet {Regulus calendula). 
Robin {Planesticus migratorius) , 
Bluebird {Sialia sialis). 

In all, says Mr. W. L. AIcAtee, thirty-six species of birds of thirteen 
families help man in his irrepressible conflict against his deadly enemy, 
the codling moth. "In some places they destroy from sixty-six to eighty- 
five per cent of the hibernating larvae." 

Now, are the farmers of this country content to let the Italians of the 
North, and the negroes of the South, shoot those birds for food, and 
devour them? What is the great American farmer going to do about 
this matter? What he should do is to write and urge his members of 
Congress to work for and vote for the federal migratory bird bill. 

The Cotton Boll Weevil. — Let us take one other concrete case. 
The cotton boll weevil invaded the United States from Mexico in 1894. 
Ten years later it was costing the cotton planters an annual loss estimated 
at fifteen million dollars per year. Later on that loss was estimated at 
twenty million dollars. The cotton boll weevil strikes at the heart of 
the industry by destroying the boll of the cotton plant. While the total 



216 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

loss never can be definitely ascertained, we know that it has amounted 
to many millions of dollars. The figure given above has been widely 
quoted, and so far as I am aware, never disputed. 

Fortunately we have at hand a government publication on this sub- 
ject which gives some pertinent facts regarding the bird enemies of the 
cotton boll weevil. It is Circular No. 57 of the Biological Survey, De- 
partment of Agriculttire. Any one can obtain it by addressing that 
Department. I quote the most important portions of this valuable 
document : 

Birds Useful in the War Against the Cotton Boll Weevil. 
By H. W. Henshaw, Chief of the Biological Survey. 

The main purpose of this circular is to direct the attention of cotton 
growers and others in the cotton growing states to the importance of 
birds in the boll weevil war, to emphasize the need of protection for 
them, and to suggest means to increase the numbers and extend the 
range of certain of the more important kinds. 

Investigations by the Biological Survey show that thirty-eight species 
of birds eat boll weevils. While some eat them only sparingly others 
eat them freely, and no fewer than forty-seven adult weevils have been 
found in the stomach of a single cliff swallow. Of the birds known at 
the present time to feed on the weevil, among the most important are 
the orioles, nighthawks, and, foremost of all, the swallows (including the 
purple martin). 

Orioles. — Six kinds of orioles live in Texas, though but two inhabit 
the southern states generally. Orioles are among the few birds that 
evince a decided preference for weevils, and as they persistently hunt 
for the insects on the bolls, they fill a place occupied by no other birds. 
They are protected by law in nearly every state in the Union, but their 
bright plumage renders them among the most salable of birds for millinery 
purposes, and despite protective laws, considerable numbers are still 
killed for the hat trade. It is hardly necessary to point out that their 
importance as insect eaters everywhere demands their protection, but 
more especially in the cotton belt. 

NiGHTHAWK. — The nighthawk, or bull-bat, also renders important 
service in the destruction of weevils, and catches them on the wing in 
considerable numbers, especially during its migration. Unfortunately, 
the nighthawk is eaten for food in some sections of the South, and considerable 
numbers are shot for this purpose. The bird's value for food, however, is 
infinitesimal as compared with the service it renders the cotton grower 
and other agriculturists, and every effort should be made to spread 
broadcast a knowledge of its usefulness as a weevil destroyer, with a view 
to its complete protection. 

Swallows. — Of all the birds now known to destroy weevils, swallows 
are the most important. Six species occur in Texas and the southern 
states. The martin, the barn swallow, the bank swallow, the roughwing. 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS 



217 



and the cliff swallow breed 
locally in Texas, and all of 
them, except the cliff swal- 
low, breed in the other 
cotton states. The white- 
bellied, or tree swallow, 
nests only in the North, 
and by far the greater num- 
ber of cliff swallows nest 
in the North and West. 

As showing how a col- 
ony of martins thrives 
when provided with suffi- 
cient room to multiply, an 
experiment by Mr. J. War- 
ren Jacobs, of Waynes- 
burg, Pa., may be cited. 
The first year five pairs 
were induced to occupy the 
single box provided, and 
raised eleven young. The 
fourth year three large 
boxes, divided into ninety- 
nine rooms, contained fifty- 
three pairs, and they raised 
about 175 young. The 
colony was thus nearly 
three hundred strong at the 
close of the fourth s'sason. 
The effect of this number 
of hungry martins on the 
insects infesting the neigh- 
borhood may be imagined. 
From the standpoint of 
the farmer and the cotton 
grower, swallows are among the most useful birds. Especially designed 
by nature to capture insects in midair, their powers of flight and endurance 
are unexcelled, and in their own field they have no competitors. Their 
peculiar value to the cotton grower consists in the fact that, like the night- 
hawk, they capture boll weevils when flying over the fields, which no other 
birds do. Flycatchers snap up the weevils near trees and shrubbery. 
Wrens hunt them out when concealed under bark or rubbish. Blackbirds 
catch them on the ground, as do the killdeer, titlark, meadow lark, and 
others; while orioles hunt for them on the bolls. But it is the peculiar 
function of swallows to catch the weevils as they are making long flights, 
leaving the cotton fields in search of hiding places in which to winter or 
entering them to continue their work of devastation. 

Means have been taken to inform residents of the northern states of 




From the "Ai 



THE BALTIMORE ORIOLE 
The Deadly Enemy of the Cotton-Boll Weevil 



218 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 




the value of the swallow 
tribe to agriculturists gener- 
ally, and particularly to cot- 
ton planters, in the belief 
that the number of swallows 
breeding in the North can 
be substantially increased. 
The cooperation of the 
northern states is impor- 
tant, since birds bred in the 
North migrate directly 
through the southern states 
in the fall on their way to 
the distant tropics, and also 
in the spring on their return. 
Important as it is to in- 
crease the number of north- 
ern breeding swallows, it is 
still more important to in- 
crease the number nesting 
in the South and to induce 

the birds there to extend their range over as much of the cotton area as 
possible. Nesting birds spend much more time in the South than mi- 
grants, and during the weeks when the old birds are feeding young they 
are almost incessantly engaged in the pursuit of insects. 

It is not, of course, claimed that birds alone can stay the ravages of 
the cotton boll weevil in Texas, but they materially aid in checking the 
advance of the pest into the other cotton states. Important auxiliaries 
in destroying these insects, birds aid in reducing their numbers within 
safe limits, and once within safe limits in keeping them there. Hence it 
is for the interests of the cotton states that special efforts be made to 
protect and care for the weevil-eating species, and to increase their num- 
bers in every way possible. — (End cf the circular.) 



THE NIGHTHAWK 

A Goatsucker, not a Song-bird; but it Feeds 
Exclusively Upon Insects 



Condensed Notes on the Food Habits of Certain 
North American Birds. 



Millions of Americans and near- Americans, both old and young, now 
need to be shown the actual figures that represent the value of our birds 
as destroyers of the insects, weeds and the small rodents that are swarm- 
ing to overrun and devour our fields, orchards and forests. Will our 
people never learn that in fighting pests the birds are worth ten times 
more to men than all the poisons, sprays and traps that ever were in- 
vented or used ? 

We cannot spray our forests; and if the wild birds do not protect 
them from insects, nothing will! If you will watch a warbler collecting 
the insects out of the top of a seventy-foot forest oak, busy as a bee 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS 



219 




hour after hour, it will con- 
vince you that the birds do 
for the forests that which 
man with all his resources 
cannot accomplish. You 
will then realize that to 
this country every wood- 
pecker, chickadee, tit- 
mouse, creeper and warbler 
is easily worth its weight in 
gold. The killing of any 
member of those groups of 
birds should be punished 
by a fine of twenty-five 
dollars. 

The Bob-White. — And 

take the Bob White Qtiail, 
for example, and the weeds 
of the farm. To kill weeds 
costs money — hard cash 
that the farmer earns by 
toil. Does the farmer put 
forth strenuous efforts to 
protect the bird of all birds 
that docs most to help him 
keep down the weeds ? Far from it ! All that the average farmer thinks 
^bout the quail is of killing it, for a few ounces of meat on the table. 

It is fairly beyond question that of all birds that influence the fortunes 
of the farmers and fruit-growers of North America, the common quail, or 
bob white, is one of the most valuable. It stays on the farm all the year 
round. When insects are most numerous and busy. Bob Wliite devotes 
to them his entire time. He cheerfully fights them, from sixteen to 
eighteen hours per day. When the insects are gone, he turns his atten- 
tion to the weeds that are striving to seed down the fields for another 
year. Occasionally he gets a few grains of wheat that have been left on 
the ground by the reapers; but he does vo damage. In California, M^here 
the valley quail once were very numerous, they sometimes consumed 
altogether too much wheat for the good of the farmers; but outside of 
California I believe such occurrences are unknown. 

Let us glance over the bob white's bill of fare: 

Weed Seeds. — One hundred and twent}'-ninc different weeds have 
been found to contribute to the quail's bill of fare. Crops and stomachs 
have been found crowded with rag-weed seeds, to the number of one 
thousand, while others had eaten as many seeds of crab-grass. A bird 
shot at Pine Brook, N. J., in October, 1902, had eaten five thousand seeds 
of green fox-tail grass, and one killed on Christmas Day at Kinsale, Va., 
had takenaboutten thousand seeds of the pig-weed. (Elizabeth A. Reed.) 



THE PURPLE MARTIN 

A Representative of the Swallow Family. A Gruat Insect-eater; 
one of the Most Valuable of all Birds to the Southern Cotton 
planter, and Northern farmer. Shot for "Food" in the South. 
Driven out of the North by the English Sparrow Pest. 



220 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

In Bulletin No. 21, Biological Survey, it is calculated that if in Virginia 
and North Carolina there are four bob whites to every square mile, and 
each bird consumes one ounce of seed per day, the total destruction to 
weed seeds from September 1st to April 80th in those states alone will 
be 1,341 tons. 

In 1910 Mrs. Margaret Morse Nice, of Clark University, Worcester, 
Mass., finished and contributed to the Journal of Economic Entomology 
(Vol. III., No. 3) a masterful investigation of "The Food of the Bob- 
White." It should be in every library in this land. Mrs. Nice publishes 
the entire list of 129 species of weed seeds consumed by the quail, — and 
it looks like a rogue's gallery. Here is an astounding record, which 
proves once more that truth is stranger than fiction : 

Number of Seeds Eaten by a Bob-White in One Day 

Barnyard grass 2,500 Milkweed 770 

Beggar ticks 1,400 Peppergrass 2,400 

Black mustard 2,500 Pigweed 12,000 

Burdock 600 Plantain 12,500 

Crab grass 2,000 Rabbitsfoot clover 30,000 

Curled dock 4,175 Round-headed bush clover. . . 1,800 

Dodder 1,560 Smartweed 2,250 

Evening primrose 10,000 White vervain 18,750 

Lamb's quarter 15,000 Water smartweed 2,000 

Notably Bad Insects Eaten by the Bob-White 

(Prof. Judd and Mrs. Nice.) 

Colorado potato beetle Clover leaf beetle 

Cucumber beetle Cotton boll weevil 

Chinch bug Cotton boll worm 

Bean-leaf beetle Striped garden caterpillar 

Wireworm Cutworms 

May beetle Grasshoppers 

Corn billbug Corn-louse ants 

Imbricated-snout beetle « Rocky Mountain locust 

Plant lice Codling moth 

Cabbage butterfly Canker worm 

Mosquito Hessian fly 

Squash beetle Stable fly 

Summary of the Quail's Insect Food 

Orthoptera — Grasshoppers and locusts 13 species. 

Hemiptera — Bugs 24 " 

Homoptera — Leaf hoppers and plant lice 6 " 

Lepidoptera — Moths, caterpillars, cut-worms, etc 19 " 

Diptera — Flies 8 

Coleoptera — Beetles 61 

Hymenoptera — Ants, wasps, slugs 8 

Other insects 6 

Total 145 " 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS 



221 



A few sample meals of 
insects. — The following are 
records of single individual 
meals of the bob white : 

Of grasshoppers, 84; 
chinch bugs, 100; squash 
bugs, 12; army worm, 12; 
cut-worm, 12; mosquitoes, 
568 in three hours ; cotton 
boll weevil, 47; flies, 1,350; 
rose slugs, 1,286. Miscel- 
laneous insects consumed 
by alaying hen quail, 1,532, 
of which 1,000 were grass- 
hoppers; total weigh of 
the lot, 24.6 grams. 

"F. M. Howard, of 
Beeville, Texas, wrote to 
the U.S. Bureau of Ento- 
mology , that the bob whites 
shot in his vicinity had 
their crops filled with the 
weevils. Another farmer 
reported his cotton fields 
full of quail, and an en- 
tire absence of weevils." 
Texas and Georgia papers 
(please copy.) 

And yet, because of its 
few pitiful ounces of flesh, 
two million gunners and 
ten thousand lawmakers 
think of the quail only as 
a bird that can be shot and 
eaten! Throughout a great portion of its former range, including New 
York and New Jersey, the species is surely and certainly on the verge 
of total extinction. And yet sportsmen gravely discuss the "bag limit," 
and "enforcement of the bag-limit law" as a means of bringing back 
this almost vanished species! Such folly in grown men is very trying. 
To my friend, the Epicure: — The next time you regale a good appetite 
with blue points, terrapin stew, filet of sole and saddle of mutton, touched 
up here and there with the high lights of rare old sherry, rich claret and 
dry monopole, pause as the dead quail is laid before you, on a funeral 
pyre of toast, and consider this: "Here lies the charred remains of the 
Farmer's Ally and Friend, poor Bob White. In life he devoured 145 
different kinds of bad insects, and the seeds of 129 anathema weeds. 
For the smaller pests of the farm, he was the most marvelous engine of 




THE BOB-WHITE 

For the Smaller Pests of the Farm, This Bird is the Most 

Marvelous Engine of Destruction Ever put 

Together of Flesh and Blood 



222 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

destruction that God ever put together of flesh and blood. He was 
good, beautiful and true; and his small life was blameless. And here 
he lies, dead; snatched away from his field of labor, and destroyed, in 
order that I may be tempted to dine three minutes longer, after I have 
already eaten to satiety." 

Then go on, and finish Bob White. 

The Case of the Robin. — For a long time this bird has been slaugh- 
tered in the South for food, regardless of the agricultural interests of the 
North. No Southern gentleman ever shoots robins, or song birds of any 
kind, but the negroes and poor whites do it. The worst case of recent 
occurrence was the slaughter in the town of Pittsboro, North^Carolina. 

It was in January, 1912. The Mayor o' the town, Hon. Bonnet Nooe, 
was away from home; and during a heavy fall of snow "the robins came 
into the town in great numbers to feed upon the berries of the cedar 
trees. In order that the birds might be killed without restriction, the 
Board of Aldermen suspended the ordinance against the firing of guns in 
the town, and permitted the inhabitants to kill the robins. " 

A disgraceful carnival of slaughter immediately followed in which 
"about all the male population " participated. Regarding this. Mayor 
Nooe later on wrote to the editor of Bird Lore as follows : 

"Hearing of this, on my return, I went to the Aldermen, all of whom 
were guilty, and told them that they and all others who were guilty 
would have to be fined. Three out of the five submitted and paid up, 
but they insisted that the ordinance be changed to read exactly as it is 
written here, with the exception that all could shoot robins in the town 
until the first of March; whereupon I resigned, as was stated." — [Bird 
Lore, XIV, 2. p 140.) 

The Mayor was quite right. The robin butchers of Pittsboro were 
not worthy to be governed by him. 

The Meadow Lark is one of the most valuable birds that frequent 
farming regions. Throughout the year insects make up 73 per cent of 
its food, weed-seeds 12 per cent, and grain only 5 per cent. During the 
insect season, insects constitute 90 per cent of its food. 

The Baltimore Oriole is as valuable to man as it is beautiful. 
Its nest is the most wonderful example of bird architecture in our land. 
In May insects constitute 90 per cent of this bird's food. For the entire 
year, insects and other animal food make 83.4 per cent and vegetable 
matter 16.6 per cent. 

The Crow Blackbird feeds as follows, throughout the whole year: 
insects, 26.9 per cent; other animal food 3.4; corn 37.2; oats, 2.9; 
wheat, 4.8; other grain, 1.6; fruits, 5; weed seeds and mast 18.2! This 
report was based on the examination (by the Biological Survey) of 
2,346 stomachs, and "the charge that the blackbird is an habitual robber 
of birds' nests was disproved by the examinations." (F. E. L. Beal.) 

Flycatchers. — The high-water mark in insect-destruction by our 
birds is reached bv the flvcatchers, — dull-colored, modest-mannered 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS 



223 



little creatures that do their 
work so quietly you hardly 
notice them. All you see 
in your tree-tops is a two- 
foot flit or glide, now here 
and now there, as the leaves 
and high branches are 
combed of their insect life. 

Bulletin No. 44 of the 
Department of Agriculture 
gives the residuum of an 
exhausting examination of 
3,398 warbler stomachs, 
from seventeen species of 
l)irds, and the result is: 
94.99 per cent of insect 
food, — mostly bad insects, 
too, — and 5.01 per cent 
vegetable food. What more 
can anv forester ask of a 
bird? 

The Sparrows.— All 
our sparrows are great con- 
stniiers of weed seeds. Pro- 
fessor Beal has calculated 
the total quantity con- 
sumed in low^a in one year, 
— in the days when spar- 
rows were normally numer- 
ous, — at 1,750,000 pounds. 

The AiMERicAN Goldfinch as a weed destroyer has few equals. 
It makes a specialty of the seeds of the members of the Order Compositae, 
and is especially fond of the seeds of ragweed, thistles, wild lettuce and 
wild simflower. But, small and beautiful as this bird is, there are htmdreds 
of thousands of grown men in America who would shoot it and eat it if 
they dared! 

The Hawks and Owls. — Let no other state repeat the error that 
once was made in Pennsylvania when that state enacted in 1885, her 
now famous hawk-and-owl bounty law. In order to accomplish the 
wholesale destruction of her birds of prey, a law was passed providing 
for the payment of a bounty of fifty cents each for the scalps of hawks 
and owls. Immediately the slaughter began. In two years 180,000 
scalps were brought in, and $90,000 were paid out for them. It was 
estimated that the saving to the farmers in poultry amounted to one 
dollar for each $1,205 paid out in bounties. 

The awakening came even more swiftly than the ornithologists ex- 
pected. By the end of two years from the passage of "the havv'k law," 




the rosr-bre.-xsted grosbeak 



"The Potato-bug Bird, 
From the 



' Greatest Enemy of the Potato Beetles 
'American Natural History" 



224 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

the farmers found their fields and orchards thoroughly overrun by- 
destructive rats, mice and insects, and they appealed to the legislature 
for the quick repeal of the law. With all possible haste this was brought 
about; but it was estimated by competent judges that in damages to 
their crops the hawk law cost the people of Pennsylvania nothing less 
than two million dollars. 

Moral: Don't make any laws providing for the destruction of hawks 
and owls until you have exact knowledge, and know in advance what 
the results will be. 

In the space at my disposal for this subject, it is impossible to treat 
our species of hawks and owls separately. The reader can find in the 
"American Natural History" fifteen pages of text, numerous illustra- 
tions and many figures elucidating this subject. Unfortunately Dr. 
Fisher's admirable work on "The Hawks and Owls" has long been out 
of print, and unobtainable. There are, however, a few observations that 
must be recorded here. 

Each bird of prey is a balanced equation. Each one, I think with- 
out a single exception, does some damage, chiefly in the destruction of 
valuable wild birds. The value of the poultry destroyed by hawks and 
owls is very small in comparion with their killing of wild prey. Many 
of the species do not touch domestic poultry! At the same time, when a 
hawk of any kind, or an owl, sets to work deliberately and persistently 
to clean out a farmer's poultry yard, and is actually doing it, that farmer 
is justified in killing that bird. But, the occasional loss of a broiler is not 
to be regarded as justification for a war of extermination on all the 
hawks that fly! Individual wild-animal nuisances can occasionally be- 
come so exasperating as to justify the use of the gun, — when scarecrows 
fail; but in all such circumstances the greatest judgment, and much for- 
bearance also, is desirable and necessary. 

The value of hawks and owls rests upon their perpetual warfare on 
the millions of destructive rats, mice, moles, shrews, weasels, rabbits and 
English sparrows that constantly prey upon what the farmer produces. 
On this point a few illustrations must be given. One of the most famous 
comes via Dr. Fisher, from one of the towers of the Smithsonian build- 
ings, and relates to 

The Barn Owl, {Strix flammea). — Two hundred pellets consisting 
of bones, hair and feathers from one nesting pair of these birds were 
collected, and found to contain 454 skulls, of which 225 were of meadow 
mice, 179 of house mice, 2 of pine mice, 20 were of rats, 6 of jumping 
mice, 20 were from shrews, 1 was of a mole and 1 a vesper sparrow. 
One bird, and 453 noxious mammals! Compare this with the record of 
any cat on earth. Anything that the barn owl wants from me, or from 
any farmer, should at once be offered to it, on a silver tray. This bird 
is often called the Monkey-Faced Owl, and it should be called the 
Farmer 's-Friend Owl. 

The Long-Eared Owl, {Asia wilsonianus) has practically the same 
kind of a record as the barn owl, — scores of mice, rats and shrews de- 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS 



225 



stroyed, and only an occa- 
sional small bird. Its 
nearest relative, the Short- 
eared Owl {A. accipitrinus) 
may be described in the 
same words. 

The Great Horned 
Owl fills us with conflicting 
passions. For the long list 
of dead rats and mice, poc- 
ket gophers, skunks, and 
weasels to his credit, we 
think well of him, and wish 
his prosperity. For the 
song-birds, ruffed grouse, 
quail, other game birds, 
domestic poultry, squirrels, 
chipmunks and hares that 
he kills, we hate him, and 
would cheerfully wring his 
neck, wearing gauntlets. 
He does an unusual amount 
of good, and a terrible 
amount of harm. It is im- 
possible to strike a balance 
for him, and determine with 
mathematical accuracy 
whether he should be shot 
or permitted to live. At all 
events, whenever Bubo 
comes up for trial, we must give the feathered devil his due. 

The names "Chicken Hawk or Hen Hawk" as applied usually 
refer to the Red-Shouldered or Red-Tailed species. Neither of these 
is really very destructive to poultry, but both are very destructive to 
mice, rats and other pestiferous creatures. Both are large, showy birds, 
not so very swift in flight, and rather easy to approach. Neither of them 
should be destroyed, — not even though they do, once in a great while, 
take a chicken or wild bird. They pay for them, four times over, by rat- 
killing. Mr. J. Alden Loring states that he once knew a pair of red- 
shouldered hawks to nest within fifty rods of a poultry farm on which 
there were 800 young chickens and 400 ducks, not one of which was 
taken. (See the American Natural History, pages 229-30.) 

Hawks that Should be Destroyed. — There are two small, fierce, 
daring, swift-winged hawks both of which are so very destructive that 
they deserve to be shot whenever possible. They are Cooper's Hawk 
(Accipiter cooperi) and the Sharp-Shinned Hawk {A. velox). They are 
closely related, and look much alike, but the former has a rounded tail 




THE barn owl 

Wonderfully Destructive of Rats and Mice, and 

Almost Never Touches Birds 



226 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

and the latter a square one. In killing them, please do not kill any other 
hawk by mistake; and if you do not positively recognize the bird, don't 
shoot. 

The Goshawk is a bad one, and so is the Peregrine Falcon, or 
Duck Hawk. Both deserve death, but they are so rare that we need 
not take them into account. 

Some of the hawks and owls are very destructive to song-birds, and 
members of the grouse family. In 159 stomachs of sharp-shinned hawks, 
99 contained song-birds and woodpeckers. In 133 stomachs of Cooper's 
hawks, 34 contained poultry or game birds, and 52 contained other birds. 
The game birds included 8 quail, 1 ruffed grouse and 5 pigeons. 

The Woodpeckers.* — These birds are the natural guardians of the 
trees. If we had enough of them, our forests would be fairly safe from in- 
sect pests. Of the six or seven North American species that are of the most 
importance to our forests, the Downy Woodpecker, {Dryobates pu- 
bescens) is accorded first rank. It is one of the smallest species. The 
contents of 140 stomachs consisted of 74 per cent insects, 25 per cent 
vegetable matter and 1 per cent sand. The insects were ants, beetles, 
bugs, flies, caterpillars, grasshoppers and a few spiders. 

The Hairy Woodpecker, {Dryobates villosus), a very close relation 
of the preceding species, is also small, and his food supply is as follows: 
insects, 68 per cent, vegetable matter 31, mineral 1. 

The Golden- Winged Woodpecker, (Colaptes auratus), is the largest 
and handsomest of all the woodpeckers that we really see in evidence. 
The Pileated is one of the largest, but we never see it. This bird makes 
a specialty of ants, of which it devours immense numbers.' Its food is 
56 per cent animal matter (three-fourths of which is ants), 39 per cent 
is vegetable matter, and 5 per cent mineral matter. 

The Red-Headed Woodpecker is a serious fruit-eater, and many 
complaints have been lodged against him. Exactly one-half his food 
supply consists of vegetable matter, chiefly wild berries, acorns, beech- 
nuts, and the seeds of wild shrubs and weeds. We may infer that about 
one-tenth of his food, in summer and fall, consists of cultivated fruit and 
berries. His proportion of cultivated foods is entirely too small to justify 
any one in destroying this species. 

In view of the prevalence of insect pests in the state of New York, 
I have spent hours in trying to devise a practical plan for making wood- 
peckers about ten times more numerous than they now are. Contribu- 
tions to this problem will be thankfully received. Yes; we do put out 
pork fat and suet in winter, quantities of it; but I grieve to say that 
to-day in the Zoological Park there is not more than one woodpecker for 
every ten that were there twelve years ago. Where have they gone' 
Only one answer is possible. They have been shot and eaten, by the 
guerrillas of destruction. 

*The reader is advised to consult Prof. F. E. L. Beale's admirable report on "The 
Food of Woodpeckers," Bulletin No. 7, U. S. Department of Agriculture. 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS 



227 



Surely no man of intelli- 
gence needs to be told to 
protect woodpeckers to the 
utmost, and to feed them in 
winter. Nail up fat pork, or 
large chunks of suet, on the 
south sides of conspicuous 
trees, and encourage the 
woodpeckers, nuthatches, 
chickadees and titmice to re- 
main in your woods through 
the long and dreary winter. 

The English Sparrow 
is a nuisance and a pest, 
because it drives away from 
the house and the orchard 
the house wren, bluebird, 
phoebc, purple martin and 
swallow, any one of which is 
more valuable to man than 
a thousand English sparrows. 
I ne\'er yet have seen one of 
the pest sparrows catch an 
insect, but Chief Forester 
Merkel says that he has seen 
one catching and eating small 
moths. 

There is one place in the 
country where English spar- 
rows have not yet come ; and 
whenever they do appear 
there, they will meet a hostile reception. I shall kill every one that 
comes, — for the sake of retaining the wrens, catbirds, phoebes and 
thrushes that now literally make home happy for my family. A good 
way to discourage sparrows is to shoot them en masse when the}^ are 
feeding on road refuse, such as the white-throated, white-crowned and 
other sparrows never touch. Persistent destruction of their nests will 
check the nuisance. 

The Shore Birds. — Who is there who thinks of the shore-birds as 
being directly beneficial to man by reason of their food habits? I war- 
rant not more than one man in every ten thousand ! We think of them 
only as possible "food." The amount of actual cash value benefit that 
the shore-birds confer upon man through the destruction of bad things 
is , in comparison with the number of birds, enormous. 

The Department of Agriculture never publishes and circulates any- 
thing that has already been published, no matter how valuable to the 
public at large. Our rules arc dififercnt. Because I know that many 




GOLDEN-WINGED WOODPECKER 

A Bird of Great Value to Orchards and Forests, now 

Rapidly Disappearing, Undoubtedly 

Through Slaughter as "Food" 



228 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

of the people of our country need the information, I am going to reprint 
here, as an object lesson and a warning, the whole of the Biological 
Survey's valuable and timely circiilar No. 79, issued April 11, 1911, and 
. written by Prof. W. L. McAtee. It should open the eyes of the American 
people to two things: the economic value of these birds, and the fact 
that they are everywhere far on the road toward extermination! 

Our Vanishing Shorebirds 
By Prof. W. L. McAtee 

The term shorebird is applied to a group of long-legged, slender-billed, 
and usually plainly colored birds belonging to the order Limicolas. More 
than sixty species of them occur in North America. True to their name 
they frequent the shores of all bodies of water, large and small, but many 
of them are equally at home on plains and prairies. 

Throughout the eastern United States shorebirds are fast vanishing. 
While formerly numerous species swarmed along the Atlantic coast and 
in the prairie regions, many of them have been so reduced that exter- 
mination seems imminent. The black-bellied plover or beetlehead, which 
occurred along the Atlantic seaboard in great numbers years ago, is now 
seen only as a straggler. The golden plover, once exceedingly abundant 
east of the Great Plains, is now rare. Vast hordes of long-billed dowitchers 
formerly wintered in Louisiana ; now they occur only in infrequent flocks 
of a half dozen or less. The Eskimo curlew within the last decade has 
probably been exterminated and the other curlews greatly reduced. In 
fact, all the larger species of shorebirds have suffered severely. 

So adverse to shorebirds are present conditions that the wonder is 
that any escape. In both fall and spring they are shot along the whole 
route of their migration north and south. Their habit of decoying readily 
and persistently, coming back in flocks to the decoys again and again, 
in spite of murderous volleys, greatly lessens their chances of escape. 

The breeding grounds of some of the species in the United States 
and Canada have become greatly restricted by the extension of agricul- 
ture, and their winter ranges in South America have probably been 
restricted in the same way. 

Unfortunately, shorebirds lay fewer eggs than any of the other species 
generally termed game birds. They deposit only three or four eggs, 
and hatch only one brood yearly. Nor are they in any wise immune 
from the great mortality known to prevail among the smaller birds. 
Their eggs and young are constantly preyed upon during the breeding 
season by crows, gulls, and jaegers, and the far northern country to which 
so many of them resort to nest is subject to sudden cold storms, which 
kill many of the young. In the more temperate climate of the United 
States small birds, in general, do not bring up more than one young bird 
for every two eggs laid. Sometimes the proportion of loss is much 
greater, actual count revealing a destruction of 70 to 80 per cent of nests 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS 229 

and eggs. Shorebirds, with sets of three or four eggs, probably do not 
on the average rear more than two young for each breeding pair. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that birds of this family, with their 
limited powers of reproduction, melt away under the relentless warfare 
waged upon them. Until recent years shorebirds have had almost no 
protection. Thus, the species most in need of stringent protection have 
really had the least. No useful birds which lay only three or four eggs 
should be retained on the list of game birds. The shorebirds should be 
relieved from persecution, and if we desire to save from extermination a 
majority of the species, action must be prompt. 

The protection of shorebirds need not be based solely on esthetic or 
sentimental grounds, for few groups of birds more thoroughly deserve 
protection from an economic standpoint. Shorebirds perform an im- 
portant service by their inroads upon mosquitoes, some of which play so 
conspicuous a part in the dissemination of diseases. ■ Thus, nine species 
are known to feed upon mosquitoes, and hundreds of the larvae or "wig- 
glers" were found in several stomachs. Fifty-three per cent of the food 
of twenty-eight northern phalaropes from one locality consisted of 
mosquito larvse. The insects eaten include the salt-marsh mosquito 
(Aedes sollicitans) , for the suppression of which the State of New Jersey 
has gone to great expense. The nine species of shorebirds known to eat 
mosquitoes are: 

Northern phalarope {Lobipes lohatus) . Semipalmated sandpiper {Ereuneles pusil- 

Wilson phalarope {Steganoptis tricolor). Ins). 

Stilt sandpiper {Micropalama liimantopus) . Killdeer (Oxyechus vociferus). 

Pectoral sand-pi-pcr (Pisobia macidata). Semipalmated plover {Aegialitis semipal- 

Baird sandoiper {Pisobia bairdi). mata). 

Least sandpiper {Pisobia miniitilla). 

Cattle and other live stock also are seriously molested by mosquitoes 
as well as by another set of pests, the horse-flies. Adults and larvae of 
these flies have been found in the stomachs of the dowitcher, the pectoral 
sandpiper, the hudsonian godwit, and the killdeer. Two species of shore- 
birds, the killdeer and upland plover, still further befriend cattle by de- 
vouring the North American fever tick. 

Among other fly larvaj consumed are those of the crane flies (leather- 
jackets) devoured by the following species: 

Northern phalarope (Lobipes lobatus). Pectoral sandpiper (Pisobia maculata). 

Wilson phalarope (Steganopus tricolor). Baird sandpiper (Pisobia bairdi). 

Woodcock (Philohela minor). Upland plover (Bartramia longicauda). 

Jacksnipe (Gallinago delicata). Killdeer (OxyecJms vociferus). 

Crane-fly larvas are frequently seriously destructive locally in grass 
and wheat fields. Among their numerous bird enemies, shorebirds 
rank high. 

Another group of insects of which the shorebirds are very fond is 
grasshoppers. Severe local infestations of grasshoppers, frequently in- 
volving the destruction of m.any acres of corn, cotton, and other crops, 



230 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 



^% 





'SV'-*C^^ 



.-, ' -'-at ^t-^wr* -- ->' 



The I'ilUeer Plover The Jacksnipe 

TWO MEMBERS OF THE GROUP OF SHORE-BIRDS 

These, with 28 other species, destroy enorir.ous numbers of locusts, grasshoppers, crane-fly 
larvae, mosquito larvae, army-worms, cut-worms cotton-worms, boll-weevils, curculios, wire-worms 
and clover-leaf weevils. It is insane folly to shoot any birds that do such work! Many species 
of the shore-birds are rapidly being exterminated. 

are by no means exceptional. Aughey found twenty-three species of 
shorebirds feeding on Rocky Mountain locusts in Nebraska, some of 
them consuming large numbers, as shown below. 

9 killdeer stomachs contained an average of 28 locusts each. 
11 semipalmated plover stomachs contained an average of 38 locusts each. 
16 mountain plover stomachs contained an average of 45 locusts each. 
11 jacksnipe stomachs contained an average of 37 locusts each. 
22 upland plover stomachs contained an average of 36 locusts each. 
10 long-billed curlew stomachs contained an average of 48 locusts each. 

Even under ordinary conditions grasshoppers are a staple food of 
many members of the shorebird family, and the following species are 
known to feed on thein: 



Northern phalarope {Lobipes lobatus). 
Avocet {Recurvirostra americana). 
Black-necked stilt {Himantopus mexicanus). 
Woodcock {Philohela minor). 
Jacksnipe {Gallinago delicata). 
Dowitcher (Macrorhamphiis griseusj. 
Robin snipe (Tringa caniitus). 
White-rumped sandpiper {Pisobia fuscicol- 

lis) . 
Baird sandpiper {Pisobia bairdi). 
Least sandpiper {Pisobia minutilla). 



Buff-breasted sandpiper [Tryngites sub- 

ruficollis). 
Spotted sandpiper {Actitis macidaria) . 
Long-billed curlew {Numenius american- 

us) . 
Black-bellied plover {Squatarola squatar- 

ola). 
Golden plover {Charadrius doniinicus) . 
Killdeer {Oxyechus vociferus). 
Semipalmated plover {Aegialitis semipal- 

mata). 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS 231 

Marbled godwit {Limosa fedoa). Ringed plover {Aegialitis hiaticula). 

Yellowlegs {Totanus flavipes). Mountain plover {Podasocys montanus). 

Solitary sandpiper (Helodromas solitarius) . Turnstone {Arenaria inter pres). 
Upland plover {Bartramia longicauda). 

vShorebirds are fond of other insect i^ests of forage and grain crops, 
including the army worm, which is known to be eaten by the killdeer 
and spotted sandpiper; also cutworms, among whose enemies are the 
avocet, woodcock, pectoral and Baird sandpipers, upland plover, and 
killdeer. Two caterpillar enemies of cotton, the cotton worm and the 
cotton cutworm, are eaten by the upland plover and killdeer. The latter 
bird feeds also on caterpillars of the genus Phlegethontius, which includes 
the tobacco and tomato worms. 

The principal farm crops have many destructive beetle enemies also, 
and some of these are eagerly eaten by shorebirds. The boll weevil and 
clover-leaf weevil are eaten by the upland plover and killdeer, the rice 
weevil by the killdeer, the cowpea weevil by the upland plover, and the 
clover-root curculio by the following species of shorebirds : 

Northern phalarope {Lobipes lohatus). White-rumped sandpiper {Pisobia fuscicollis) 
Pectoral sandpiper {Pisobia maculata). Upland plover {Bartramia longicauda). 
Baird sandpiper {Pisobia bairdi). Killdeer {Oxyechus vociferus) . 

The last two eat also other weevils which attack cotton, grapes and 
sugar beets. Bill-bugs, which often do considerable damage to corn, 
seem to be favorite food of some of the shorebirds. They are eaten by 
the Wilson phalarope, avocet, black-necked stilt, pectoral sandpiper, 
killdeer, and upland plover. They are an important element of the latter 
bird's diet, and no fewer than eight species of them have been found in 
its food. 

Wire worms and their adult forms, click beetles, are devoured by the 
northern phalarope, woodcock, jacksnipe, pectoral sandpiper, killdeer, 
and upland plover. The last three feed also on the southern corn leaf- 
beetle and the last two upon the grapevine colaspis. Other shorebirds 
that eat leaf -beetles are the Wilson phalarope and dowitcher. 

Crayfishes, which are a pest in rice and corn fields in the South and 
which injure levees, are favorite food of the black-necked stilt, and several 
other shorebirds feed upon them, notably the jacksnipe, robin snipe, 
spotted sandpiper, upland plover, and killdeer. 

Thus it is evident that shorebirds render important aid by devouring 
the enemies of farm crops and in other ways, and their services arc appre- 
ciated by those who have observed the birds in the field. Thus W. A. 
Clark, of Corpus Christi, Tex., reports that upland plovers are industrious 
in following the plow and in eating the grubs that destroy garden stuff, 
corn, and cotton crops. H. W. Tinkham, of Fall River, Mass., says of 
the spotted sandpiper: "Three pairs nested in a young orchard behind 
my house and adjacent to my garden. I did not see them once go to the 
shore for food (shore about 1,500 feet away), but I did see them many 
times make faithful search of my garden for cutworms, spotted squash 



-232 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

bugs, and green flies. Cutworms and cabbage worms were their special 
prey. After the young could fly, they still kept at work in my garden, 
and showed no inclination to go to the shore until about August 15th. 
They and a flock of quails just over the wall helped me wonderfully." 

In the uncultivated parts of their range also, shorebirds search out 
and destroy many creatures that are detrimental to man's interest. 
Several species prey upon the predaceous diving beetles (Dytiscidae) , 
which are a nuisance in fish hatcheries and which destroy many insects, 
the natural food of fishes. The birds now known to take these beetles are : 

Northern phalarope {Lohipes lobatus). Dowitcher {Macrorhamphus griseus). 

Wilson phalarope {Steganopus tricolor). Robin snipe {Tringa canutus). 

Avocet {Recurvirostra americana). Pectoral sandpiper (Pisobia macnlata). 

Black-necked stilt {Himantopus mexicanus). Red-backed sandpiper {Pelidna alpina sak- 
Jacksnipe (Gallinago delicata). halina). 

Killdeer {Oxyechus vociferus). 

Large numbers of marine worms of the genus Nereis, which prey upon 
oysters, are eaten by shorebirds. These worms are common on both the 
Atlantic and Gulf coasts and are eaten by shorebirds wherever they 
occur. It is not uncommon to find that from 100 to 250 of them have 
been eaten at one meal. The birds known to feed upon them are: 

Northern phalarope {Lohipes lobatus). White-rumped sandpiper (Pisobia fuscicol- 

Dowitcher {Macrorhamphus griseus). lis). 

Stilt sandpiper {Micropalama himantopus) . Red-backed sandpiper {Pelidna alpina sak- 

Robin snipe {Tringa canutus) . halina). 

Purple sandpiper {Arquatella maritima). Killdeer {Oxyechus vociferus). 

The economic record of the shorebirds deserves nothing but praise. 
These birds injure no crop, but on the contrary feed upon many of the 
worst enemies of agriculture. It is worth recalling that their diet in- 
cludes such pests as the Rocky Mountain locust and other injurious 
grasshoppers, the army worm, cutworms, cabbage worms, cotton worm, 
cotton cutworm, boll weevil, clover leaf weevil, clover root curculio, rice 
weevil, corn bill-bugs wire worms, corn leaf -beetles, cucumber beetles, 
white grubs, and such foes of stock as the Texas fever tick, horseflies, 
and mosquitoes. Their warfare on crayfishes must not be overlooked, 
nor must we forget the more personal debt of gratitude we owe them for 
preying upon mosquitoes. They are the most important bird enemies 
of these pests known to us. 

Shorebirds have been hunted until only a remnant of their once vast 
numbers is left. Their limited powers of reproduction, coupled with 
the natural vicissitudes of the breeding period, make their increase slow, 
and peculiarly expose them to danger of extermination. 

In the way of protection a beginning has been made, and a continuous 
close season until 1915 has been established for the following birds: 
The killdeer, in Massachusetts and Louisiana; the upland plover, in 
Massachusetts, and Vermont; and the piping plover in Massachusetts. 
But, considering the needs and value of these birds, this modicum of 
protection is small indeed. 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS 233'. 

The above-named species are not the only ones that should be ex- 
empt from persecution, for all the shorebirds of the United States are in 
great need of better protection. They should be protected, first, to save 
them from the danger of extermination, and, second, because of their 
economic importance. So great, indeed, is their economic value, that 
their retenion on the game list and their destruction by sportsmen is a 
serious loss to agriculture. ^ — (End of the circular.) 



The following appeared in the Zoological Society Bulletin, for Jan- 
uary, 1909, from Richard Walter Tomalin, of Sydney, N. S. W. : 

"In the subdistricts of Robertson and Kangaloon in the Illawarra 
district of New South Wales, what ten years ago was a waving mass of 
English cocksfoot and rye grass, which had been put in gradually as the 
dense vine scrub was felled and burnt off, is now a barren desert, and 
nine families out of every ten which were renting properties have been 
compelled to leave the district and take up other lands. This is through 
the grubs having eaten out the grass by the roots. Ploughing proved 
to be useless, as the grubs ate out the grass just the same. Whilst there 
recently I was informed that it took three years from the time the grubs 
were first seen until to-day, to accomplish this complete devastation; 
in other words, three years ago the grubs began work in the beautiful 
country of green mountains and running streams. 

"The birds had all been ruthlessly shot and destroyed in that dis- 
trict, and I was amazed at the absence of bird life. The two sub-districts 
I have mentioned have an area of about thirty square miles, and form a 
table-land about 1200 feet above sea level." 

The same kind of common sense that teaches men to go in when it 
rains, and keep out of fiery furnaces, teaches us that as a business prop- 
osition it is to man's interest to protect the birds. Make them plentiful 
and keep them so. When we strike the birds, we hurt ourselves. The 
protection of our insect-eating and seed-eating birds is a cash proposi- 
tion, — protect or pay. 

Were I a farmer, no gun ever should be fired on my premises at any 
bird save the English sparrow and the three bad hawks. Any man who 
would kill my friend Bob White I would treat as an enemy. The man who 
would shoot and eat any of the song-birds, woodpeckers, or shorebirds 
that worked for me, I would surely molest. 

Every farmer should post every foot of his lands, cultivated and not 
cultivated. The farmer who does not do so is his own enemy ; and he needs 
a guardian. 

At this stage of wild life extermination, it is impossible to make our 
bird-protection laws too strict, or too far-reaching. The remnant of 
our birds should be protected, with clubs and guns if necessary. All our 
shore birds should be accorded a ten-year close season. Don't ask the 
gunners whether they will agree to it or not. Of course they will not 
agree to it, — never! But our duty is clear, — to go ahead and do it! 



CHAPTER XXIV 
GAME AND AGRICULTURE; AND DEER AS A FOOD SUPPLY 

As a state and county asset, the white-tailed deer contains possi- 
bilities that as yet seem to be ignored by the American people as a whole. 
It is quite time to consider that persistent, prolific and toothsome animal. 

The proposition that large herds of horned game can not becomingly 
roam at will over farms and vineyards worth one hundred dollars per acre, 
affords little room for argument. Generally speaking, there is but one 
country in the world that breaks this well-nigh universal rule; and that 
country is India. On the plains between and adjacent to the Ganges 
and the Jumna, for two thousand years herds of black-buck, or sasin ante- 
lope, have roamed over cultivated fields so thickly garnished with human 
beings that to-day the rifle-shooting sportsman stands in hourly peril of 
bagging a five-hundred-rupee native every time he fires at an antelope. 

Wherever rich agricultural lands exist, the big game must give way, — 
Jrofn those lands. To-day the bison could not survive in Iowa, eastern 
Nebraska or eastern Kansas, any longer than a Shawnee Indian would 
last on the Bowery. It was foredoomed that the elk, deer, bear and wild 
turkey should vanish from the rich farming regions of the East and the 
middle West. 

To-day in British East Africa lions are being hunted with dogs and 
shot wholesale, because they are a pest to the settlers and to the surviving 
herds of big game. At the same time, the settlers who are striving to 
wrest the fertile plains of B. E. A. from the domain of savagery declare 
that the African buffalo, the zebra, the kongoni and the elephant are 
public nuisances that must be suppressed by the rifle. 

Even the most ardent friend of wild life must admit that when a 
settler has laboriously fenced his fields, and plowed and sowed, only to 
have his whole crop ruined in one night by a herd of fence-breaking 
zebras, the event is sufficient to abrade the nerves of the party most in 
interest. While I take no stock in stories of dozens of "rogue " elephants 
that require treatment with the rifle, and of grown men being imperiled 
by savage gazelles, we admit that there are times when wild animals can 
make nuisances of themselves. Let us consider that subject now. 

Wild Animal Nuisances. — Complaints have come to me, at various 
times, of great destruction of lambs by eagles ; of trout by blue herons ; 
of crops (on Long Island) by deer; of pears destroyed by birds, and of 
valuable park trees by beavers that chop down trees not wisely but too 
well. I do not, however, include in this category any cherries eaten by 
robins, or orioles, or jays; for they are of too small importance to con- 
sider in this court. 



GAME AND AGRICULTURE; DEER AS FOOD 



235. 




A FOOD SUPPLY OF WHITE-TAILED DEER 
The Killing of the Does was Wrong 

To meet the legitiinate dcinands for the abatement of unbearable 
wild-animal nuisances, I recommend the enactment of a law similar to 
Section 158 of the Game laws of New York, which provides for the safe 
and legitimate abatement of unbearable wild creatures as follows : 

vSection 158. Power to Take Birds and Quadrupeds. In the event that any sjiecies of 
birds protected by the provisions of section two hundred and nineteen of this article, or 
quadrupeds protected by law, shall at any time, in any locality, become destructive of 
private or public property, the commission shall have power in its discretion to direct 
any game protector, or issue a permit to any citizen of the state, to take such species of 
birds or quadrupeds and dispose of the same in such manner as the commission inay 
provide. Such permit shall expire within four months after the date of issuance. 

This measure should be adopted b}^ every state that is troubled bv 
too many, or too aggressive, wild inammals or birds. 

But to return to the subject of big game and farming. AVe do not 
complain of the disappearance of the bison, elk, deer and bear from the 
farms of the United States and Canada. The passing of the big game 
from all such regions follows the advance of real civilization, just so 
surely and certainly as night follows day. 

But this vast land of ours is not wholly composed of rich agricultural 
lands; not by any means. There are millions of acres of forest lands, 
good, bad and indifferent, worth from nothing per acre up to one hundred 



236 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

•dollars or more. There are millions of acres of rocky, brush-covered 
mountains and hills, wholly unsuited to agriculture, or even horticulture. 
There are other millions of acres of arid plains and arboreal deserts, on 
which nothing but thirst-proof animals can live and thrive. The South 
contains vast pine forests and cypress swamps, millions of acres of them, 
of which the average northerner knows less than nothing. 

We can not stop long enough to look it up, but from the green color 
on our national map that betokens the forest reserves, and from our own 
personal knowledge of the deserts, swamps, barrens and rocks that we 
have seen, we make the estimate that fully one-third of the total area of the 
United States is incapable of supporting the husbandman who depends 
for his existence upon tillage of the soil. People may talk and write about 
"dry farming" all they please, but I wish to observe that from Dry- 
Farming to Success is a long shot, with many limbs in the way. When it 
rains sufficiently, dry farming is a success ; but otherwise it is not ; and 
we heartily wish it were otherwise. 

The logical conclusion of our land that is utterly unfit for agri ulture 
is a great area of land available for occupancy by valuable wild animals. 
Every year the people of the United States are wasting uncountable mil- 
lions of pounds of venison, because we are neglecting our opportunities 
for producing it practically without cost. Imagine for a moment bestow- 
ing upon land owners the ability to stock with white-tailed and Indian 
sambar deer all the wild lands of the United States that are suitable for 
those species, and permitting only bucks over one year of age to be shot. 
With the does even reasonably protected, the numerical results in annual 
pounds of good edible flesh fairly challenges the imagination. 

About six years ago, Mr. C. C. Worthington's deer, in his fenced park 
at Shawnee-on-Delaware, Pennsylvania, became so numerous and so 
burdensome that he opened his fences and permitted about one thousand 
head to go free. 

We are losing each year a very large and valuable asset in the intan- 
gible form of a million hardy deer that we might have raised but did not ! 
Our vast domains of wooded mountains, hills and valleys lie practically 
untenanted by big game, save in a few exceptional spots. We lose be- 
cause we are lawless. We lose because we are too improvident to conserve 
large forms of wild life unless we are compelled to do so by the stern edict 
of the law! The law-breakers, the game-hogs, the conscienceless doe- 
and-fawn slayers are everywhere! Ten per cent of all the grown men 
now in the United States are to-day poachers, thieves and law-breakers, 
or else they are liable to become so to-morrow. If you doubt it, try 
risking your new umbrella unprotected in the next mixed company of 
one hundred men that you encounter, in such a situation that it will be 
easy to "get away" with it. 

We could raise two million deer each year on our empty wild lands; 
but without fences it would take half a million real game-wardens, on 
-duty from dawn until dark, to protect them from destructive slaughter. 



GAME AND AGRICULTURE; DEER AS FOOD 237 

At present our land of liberty contains only 9,354 game wardens.* The 
states that contain the greatest areas of wild lands naturally lack in 
population and in tax funds, and not one such state can afford to put into 
the field even half enough salaried game wardens to really protect her 
game from surreptitious slaughter. The surplus of "personal liberty" 
in this liberty-cursed land is a curse to the big game. The average 
frontiersman never will admit the divine right of kings, but he does 
ardently believe in the divine right of settlers, — to reach out and take 
any of the products of Nature that they happen to fancy. 

Wild Meat as a Food Supply. — We hear much these days about 
the high cost of living, but thus far we have made no move to mend the 
situation. With coal going straight up to ten dollars per ton, beef going 
up to fifteen dollars per hundred on the hoof and wheat and hay going- 
up — heaven alone knows where, it is time for all Americans who are not 
rich to arouse and take thought for the morrow. What are we going to 
do about itf The tariff on the coarser necessities of life is now booked to 
come down; but what about the fresh meat supply? 

I desire to point out that between Bangor and San Diego and from 
Key West to Bellingham, our country contains millions of acres of wild, 
practically uninhabited forests, rough foot-hills, bad-lands and mountains 
that could produce two million deer each year, without deducting 
$50,000 a year from the wealth of the country. I grant that in the total 
number of deer that would be necessary to produce two million deer per 
annum, the farms situated on the edges of forests, and actually within 
the forests, would suffer somewhat from the depredations of those deer. 
As I will presently show by documentary records, every one of those 
individual damages that exceeds two dollars in value could be com- 
pensated in cash, and afterward leave on the credit side of the deer account 
an enormous annual balance. 

Stop for a moment, you enterprising atid restless men and women 
who travel all over the United States, and think of the illimitable miles 
of unbroken forest that you have looked upon from your Pullman 
windows in the East, in the South, in the West and in southern Canada. 
Recall the wooded mountains of the Appalachian system, the White 
Mountain region, the pine forests of the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf 
States, the forests of Tennessee, Arkansas and southern Missouri; of 
northern Minnesota, and every state of the Rocky Mountain region. 
Then, think of the silent and untouched forests of the Pacific Coast and 
tell me whether you think five million deer scattered through all those 
forests would make any visible impression upon them. That would be 
only about twenty-five times as many as are there now! I think the 
forests would not be over populated; and they would produce two mil- 
lion killable deer each year! 

Last year, 11,000 deer were forced down out of their hiding places 
in the Rocky Mountains, and were killed in Montana. Even the natives 

* Of this force, there are only 1,200 salaried wardens. The most of those who serve 
without salaries naturally render but little continuous or regular service. 



238 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

had not dreamed there were so many available ; and they were slaughtered 
not wisely but too ill. It is not right that six members of one family 
should "hog" twelve deer in one season. At present no deer supply can 
stand such slaughter. 

Assuming that the people of the United States cottld be educated 
into the idea of so conserving deer that they could draw two million 
head per year from the general stock, what would it be worth? 

It is not very difficult to estimate the value of a deer, when the whole 
animal can be utilized. In various portions of the United States, deer 
vary in size, but I shall take all this into account, and try to strike a fair 
average. In some sections, where deer are large and heavy, a full-grown 
buck is easily worth twenty-five dollars. Let him who doubts it, try to 
replace those generous pounds of flesh with purchased beef and mutton 
and veal, and see how far twenty-five dollars will go toward it. Every 
man who is a householder knows full well how little meat one dollar will 
buy at this time. 

I think that throughout the United States as a whole every full-grown 
deer, male or female contains on an average ten dollars worth of good 
meat. I know of one large preserve which annually sells its surplus of 
deer at that price, wholesale, to dealers; and in New York City (doubt- 
less in many other cities, also) venison often has sold in the market at 
one dollar per pound ! 

Two milHon deer at $10 each mean $20,000,000. The Hcenses for the 
killing of two million deer should cost one million men one dollar each; 
and that would pay 1,666 new game wardens each fifty dollars per month, 
all the year round. The damages that would need to be paid to farmers, 
on account of crops injured by deer, would be so small that each county 
could take care of its own cases, from its own treasury, as is done in the 
State of Vermont. 

There are certain essentials to the realization of a dream of two mil- 
lion deer per year that are absolutely required. They are neither obscure 
nor impossible. 

Each state and each county proposing to stock its vacant woods 
with deer must resolutely educate its own people in the necessity of 
playing fair about the killing of deer, and giving every man and every 
deer a square deal. This is not impossible! Not as a general thing, even 
though it may be so in some specially lawless communities. If the 
leading men of the state and the county will take this matter seriously in 
hand, it can be done in two years' time. The American people are not 
insensible to appeals to reason, when those appeals are made by their 
own "home folks." The governors, senators, assemblymen, judges, 
mayors and justices of the peace could, if they would, make a campaign 
of education and appeal that would result in the creation of an immense 
volume of free wild food in every state that possesses wild lands. 

When the shoe of Necessity pinches the People hard enough, remem- 
ber the possibilities in deer. 



240 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 



The best wild animal to furnish a serious food supply is the white- 
tailed deer. This is because of its persistence and fertility. The elk is 
too large for general use. An elk carcass can not be carried on a horse; 
it is impossible to get a sled or a wagon to where it lies ; and so, fully half 
of it usually is wasted ! The mule deer is good for the Rocky Mountains, 
and can live where the white-tail can not ; but it is too easy to shoot! The 
Columbian black-tail is the natural species for the forests of the Pacific 
states; but it is a trifile small in size. 

The Example of Vermont. — In order to show that all the above is 
not based on empty theory, — regarding the stocking of forests with 
deer, their wonderful powers of increase, and the practical handling of 
the damage question, — let us take the experience and the fine example 
of Vermont. 

In April, 1875, a few sportsmen of Rutland, of whom the late Henr}^ 
W. Cheney was one, procured in the Adirondacks thirteen white-tailed 
deer, six bucks and seven does. These were liberated in a forest six 
miles from Rutland, and beyond being protected from slaughter, they 
were left to shift for themselves. They increased, slowly at first, then 
rapidly, and by 1897, they had become so numerous that it seemed right 
to have a short annual open season, and kill a few. From first to last, 
many of those deer have been killed contrary to law. In 1904-5, it was 
known that 294 head were destroyed in that way; and undoubtedly 
there were others that were not reported. 



Account of Deer Killed in Vermont, of Record Since Killing 

Began, in 1897 

From John W. Titcomh, State Game Commissioner, Lyndonville, Vt., Aug. 2j, igiz 





By 


By 


By 


Wounded 


By 


By 


Average 


Gross 


Year 


Hunters, 


Hunters, 


Dogs 


Deer 


Railroad 


Various 


Weight 


Weight 




Legally 


Illegally 




Killed 


Trains 


Accidents 


(lbs.) 


(lbs.) 


1897* 


103 


47 














1898 


131 


30 


40 




3 








1899 


90 
















1900 


123 
















1901 


211 
















1902 


403 


81 


50 


13 


14 




171 


68,747 


1903 


753 


199 










190 


142,829 


1904 


541 
















1905 


497 


163 


74 


22 


18 


17 


198 




1906 


634 












200 


127,193 


1907 


991 


287 


208 


62 


31 


21 


196 


134,353 


1908 


2,208 












207 


457,585 


1909 


4,597 


381 


168 


69 


24 


72 


155 


716,358 



* First open season after deer restored to state in 1875. 

Damages to Crops by Deer. — For several years past, the various 
counties of Vermont have been paying farmers for damages inflicted upon 



GAME AND AGRICULTURE; DEER AS FOOD 241 

their crops by deer. Clearl3^ it is more just that counties should settle 
these damages than that they should be paid from the state treasury, 
because the counties paying damages have large compensation in the 
value of the deer killed each year. The hunting appears to be open to 
all persons who hold licenses from the state. 

In order that the public at large may know the cost of the Vermont 
system, I offer the following digest compiled from the last biennial 
report of the State Fish and Game Commissioner: 

Damages Paid for Deer Depredations in Vermont During 

Two Years 

Total damages paid from June 8, 1908, to June 22, 1910 $4,865.98 

Total number of claims paid 311 

Total number of claims under $5 80 

Number between $5 and $10, inclusive 102 

Number over $25 and under $51 23 

Number between $50 and $100 11 

Number in excess of $100 4 

Number in excess of $200 1 

Largest claim paid $326.50 

Value of White-Tailed Deer. — Having noted the fact that in two 
years (1908-9), the people of Vermont paid out $4,865 in compensation 
for damages inflicted by deer, it is of interest to determine whether that 
money was wisely expended. In other words, did it pay? 

We have seen that in the years 1908 and 9, the people of Vermont 
killed, legally and illegally, and converted to use, 7,186 deer. This does 
not include the deer killed by dogs and by accidents. 

Regarding the value of a full-grown deer, it must be remembered 
that much depends upon the locality of the carcass. In New York or 
Pittsburg or Chicago, a whole deer is worth, at wholesale, at least twenty- 
five dollars. In Vermont, where deer are plentiful, they are worth a less 
sum. I think that fifteen dollars would be a fair figure, — at least low 
enough ! 

Even when computed at fifteen dollars per carcass, those deer were 
worth to the people of Vermont $107,790. It would seem, therefore, 
that the soundness of Vermont's policy leaves no room for argument; 
and we hope that other states, and also private individuals, will profit 
by Vermont's very successful experiment in bringing back the deer to 
her forests, and in increasing the food supply of her people. 

Killing Female Deer. — To say one word on this subject which 
might by any possibility be construed as favoring it, is like juggling with 
a lighted torch over a barrel of gunpowder. Already, in Pennsylvania 
at least one gentleman has appeared anxious to represent me as favoring 
the killing of does, which in nine hundred and ninty-nine cases out of 
every thousand I distinctly and emphatically do not. The slaughter 
of female hoofed game animals is necessarily destructive and repre- 
hensible, and not one man out of every ten thousand in this country e\'er 
will see the place and time wherein the opposite is true. 



242 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

At present there are just two places in America, and I think only two, 
wherein there exists the sHghtest exception on this point. The state of 
Vermont is becoming overstocked with deer, and the females have in 
some counties (not in all), become so tame and destructive in orchards, 
gardens and farm crops as to constitute a great annoyance. For this 
reason, the experiment is being made of permitting does to be killed under 
license, until their number is somewhat reduced. 

The first returns from this trial have now come in, from the county 
game wardens of Vermont to the state game warden, Mr. John W. Tit- 
comb. I will quote the gist of the opinion of each. 

The State Commissioner says: "This law should remain in force at 
least until there is some indication of a decrease in the number of deer." 
Warden W. H. Taft (Addison County) says: "The killing of does I 
believe did away with a good many of these tame deer that cause most 
of the damage to farmers' crops." Harry Chase (Bennington County) 
says the doe-killing law is " a good law, and I sincerely trust it will not 
be repealed. ' ' Warden Hay ward of Rutland County says : ' ' The majority 
of the farmers in this county are in favor of repealing the doe law. ... A 
great many does and young deer (almost fawns) were killed in this county 
during the hunting season of 1909." R. W. Wheeler, of Rutland County 
says : "Have the doe law repealed ! We don't need it ! " H.J. Parcher of 
Washington County finds that the does did more damage to the crops 
than the bucks, and he thinks the doe law is "a just one." R. L. Frost, 
of Windham County, judicially concludes that "the law allowing does 
to be killed should remain in force one or two seasons more." C. S 
Parker, of Orleans County, saj^s his county is not overstocked with deer, 
and he favors a special act for his county, to protect females. 

A summary of the testimony of the wardens is easily made. When 
deer are too plentiful, and the over-tame does become a public nuisance 
too great to be endured, the number should be reduced by regular shoot- 
ing in the open season; but. 

As soon as the proper balance of deer life has been restored, protect 
the does once more. 

The pursuit of this policy is safe and sane, provided it can be wrought 
out without the influence of selfishness, and reckless disregard for the 
rights of the next generation. On the whole, its handling is like playing 
with fire, and I think there are very, very few states on this earth wherein 
it would be wise or safe to try it. As a wise friend once remarked to me, 
"Give some men a hinch, and they'll alwaj^s try to take a hell." In 
Vermont, however, the situation is kept so well in hand we may be sure 
that at the right moment the law providing for the decrease of the number 
of does will be repealed. 

Hippopotami and Antelopes. — Last year a bill was introduced in 
the lower House of Congress proposing to provide funds for the intro- 
duction into certain southern states of various animals from Africa, 
especially hippopotami and African antelopes. The former were proposed 
partly for the purpose of ridding navigation of the water hyacinths that 



GAME AND AGRICULTURE; DEER AS FOOD 243 

now are choking many of the streams of Louisiana and Mississippi. 
The antelopes were to be accHmatized as a food supply for the people 
at large. 

This measure well illustrates the prevailing disposition of the American 
people to-day, — -to ignore and destroy their own valuable natural stock 
of wild birds and mammals, and when they have completed their war of 
extermination, reach out to foreign countries for foreign species. In- 
stead of preserving the deer of the South, the South reaches out for the 
utterly impossible antelopes of Africa, and the preposterous hippopota- 
mus. The North joyously exterminates her quail and ruffed grouse, and 
goes to Europe for the Hungarian partridge. That partridge is a failure 
here, and I am heartily glad oj it, on the ground that the exterminators 
of our native species do not deserve success in their efforts to displace 
our finest native species with others from abroad. 

The hippo-antelope proposition is a climax of absurdity, in proposing 
the replacing of valuable native game with impossible foreign species. 



CHAPTER XXV 
LAW AND SENTIMENT AS FACTORS IN PRESERVATION 

There is grave danger that through ignorance of the true character 
of about 80 per cent of the men and boys who shoot wild creatures, a 
great wrong will be done the latter. Let us not make a fatal mistake. 

After more than thirty years of observation among all kinds of sports- 
men, hunters and gunners, I am convinced that it is utterly futile and 
deadly dangerous to rely on humane, high-class sentiment to diminish 
the slaughter of wild things by game-hogs and pot-hunters. 

In some respects, the term "game-hog" is a rude, rough word; but 
it is needed in the English language, and it has come to stay. It is a 
disagreeable term, but it was brought into use to apply to a class of very 
disagreeable persons. 

A "game-hog" is a hunter of game who knows no such thing as 
sentiment or conscience in the killing of game, so long as he keeps within 
the limit of the law. Regardless of the scarcity of game, or of its hard 
struggle for existence, he will kill right up to the bag limit every day that 
he goes out, provided it is possible to do so. He uses the "law" as a 
salve for the spot where his conscience should be. He will shoot with 
any machine gun, or gun of big calibre, in every way that the law allows, 
and he knows no such thing as giving the game a square deal. He brags 
of his big bags of game, and he loves to be photographed with a wagon- 
load of dead birds as a background. He believes in automatic and pump 
guns, spring shooting, longer open seasons and "more game." He is 
quite content to shoot half tame ducks in a club preserve as they fly be- 
tween coop and pond, whenever he secures an opportunity. He will 
gladly sell his game whenever he can do so without being found out, and 
sometimes when he is. 

Often a true sportsman drifts without realizing it into some one way 
of the confirmed game-hog; but the moment he is made to realize his 
position, he changes his course and his standing. The game-hog is im- 
pervious to argument. You can shame a horse away from his oats more 
easily than you can shame him from doing "what the Law allows." 

There are hundreds of thousands of gentlemen and gentlewomen who 
never once have come in touch with real cloven-footed game-hogs, who 
do not understand the species at all, and do not recognize its ear-marks. 
Thousands of such persons will tell you: "In my opinion, the best way 
to save the wild life is to educate the people!" I have heard that, many, 
many times. 

For right-hearted people, a little law is quite sufficient; and the best 



LAW AND SENTIMENT IN PRESERVATION 245 

people need none at all! But the game-hogs are different. For them, 
the strict letter of the law, backed up by a strong-arm squad, is the only- 
controlling influence that they recognize. To them it is necessary to 
say : ' ' You shall ! ' ' and ' ' You shall not ! ' ' 

Only yesterday the latest game-hog case was related to me by a 
game-protector from Kansas. Into a certain county of southern Kansas, 
from which the prairie-chicken had been totally gone for a dozen years 
■or more, a pair of those birds entered, settled down and nested. Their 
coming was to many habitants a joyous event. " Now," said the People, 
"we will care for these birds, and they will multiply, and presently the 
county will be restocked." 

But Ahab came! Two men from another county, calling themselves 
sportsmen but not entitled to that name, heard of those birds, and re- 
solved to "get them." They waited until the young were just leaving 
the nest: and they went down and camped near by. On the first day 
they killed the two parent birds and half the flock of young birds, and 
the next day they got all the rest. 

But there is a sequel to this story. One of those men was a dealer in 
guns and ammunition; and when his customers heard what he had done, 
"they simply put him out of business, by refusing to trade with him any 
more." He is now washing dirty dishes in a restaurant; but at heart 
he is a game-hog, just the same. 

Near Bridgeport, Connecticut, a gentleman of my acquaintance 
owns a fine estate which is adorned with a trout stream and a superfine 
trout pond. Once he invited a business man of Bridgeport to be his 
^uest, and fish for trout in his pond. On that guest, during a visit of 
three days all the finest forms of hospitality were bestowed. 

Two weeks later, my friend's game- warden caught that guest, early 
•on a Sunday morning, poaching on the trout-pond, and spoiled his care- 
fully arranged get-away. 

In his book "Saddle and Camp in the Rockies," Mr. Dillon Wallace 
tells a story of a man from New York who in the mountains of Colorado 
•deliberately corrupted his guides with money or other influences, shot 
mountain sheep in midsummer, and "got away with it." 

In northern Minnesota, George E. Wood has been having a hand-to- 
Tiand fight . with the worst community of game-hogs and alien-born 
poachers of which I have heard. There appears to be no game law that 
they do not systematically violate. The killers seem determined to 
annihilate the last head of game, in spite of fines and imprisonments. 
The foreigners are absolutely uncontrollable. The latest feature of the 
war is the discovery of a tannery in the woods, where the hides of illegally- 
slaughtered deer and moose are dressed. Apparently the only kind of a 
law that will save the game of northern Minnesota is one that will totally 
•disarm the entire population. 

■ In Pennsylvania, there exists an association which was formed for 
the express purpose of fighting the vState Game Commission, preventing 



246 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

the enactment of a hunter's license law and repealing the law against 
the killing of female deer and hornless fawns. The continued existence 
of that organization on that basis would be a standing disgrace to the 
fair name of Pennsylvania. I think, however, that that organization 
was founded on secret selfish purposes, and that ere long the general 
body of members will awaken to a realizing sense of their position, and 
range themselves in support of the excellent policies of the commission. 

A PoT-HuNTER is a man or boy who kills game as a business, for the 
money that can be derived from its sale, or other use. vSuch men have the 
same feelings as butchers. From their point of view, they can see no 
reason why all the game in the world should not be killed and marketed. 
Like the feather-dealers, they wish to get out of the wild life all the money 
there is in it; that is all. Left to themselves, with open markets they 
would soon exterminate the land fauna of the habitable portions of the 
globe. 

No one can "educate" such people. For the gunners, game-hogs 
and pot-hunters, there is no check, save specific laws that sternly and 
amply safeguard the rights of the wild creatures that can not make laws 
for themselves. 

Nor can anyone educate the heartless woman of fashion who is de- 
termined to wear aigrettes as long as her money can buy them. The best 
women of the world have already been educated on the bird-millinery 
subject, and they are already against the use of the gaudy badges of 
slaughter and extermination. But in the great cities of the world there 
are thousands of women who are at heart as cruel as Salome herself, and 
whose vicious tastes can be curbed only by the strong hand of the law. 
"Sentiment " for wild birds is not in them. 

Because of the vicious and heartless elements among men and women, 
we say, Give us far-reaching, iron-bound laws for the protection of wild life, 
and plenty of courageous men to enforce them. 



CHAPTER XXVr 

THE ARMY OF THE DEFENSE 

It now seems that the friends of wild life who themselves are not on 
the firing-line should be afforded some definite information regarding the 
Army of the Defense, and its strength and weakness. It is an interesting 
subject, but the limitations of space will not permit an extended treatment. 

Over the world at large, I think the active Destroyers outnumber 
the active Defenders of wild life at least in the ratio of 500 to 1 ; and the 
money available to the Destroyers is to the funds of the Defenders as 
500 is to 1. The average big-game sportsman cheerfully expends from 
$500 to $1,000 on a hunting trip, but resents the suggestion that he should 
subscribe from $50 to $100 for wild life preservation. If he puts down 
$10, he thinks he has done a Big Thing. Worse than this, I am forced 
to believe that at least 75 per cent of the big-game sportsmen of the 
world never have contributed one dollar in money, or one hour of effort, 
to that cause. But there are exceptions; and I can name at least fifty 
sportsmen who have subscribed $100 each to campaign funds, and some 
who have given as high as $1,000. 

Once I sat down beside a financially rich slaughterer of game, and 
asked him to subscribe a sum of real money in behalf of a very important 
campaign. I needed funds very much; and I explained, exhorted and 
besought. I pointed out his duty — to give back something in return for 
all the game slaughter that he had enjoyed. For ten long minutes he 
stood fire without flinching, and without once opening his lips to speak. 
He made no answer no argument, no defense and finally he never gave 
up one cent. 

Wherever the English language is spoken, from Tasmania to Scotland, 
and from Porto Rico to the Philippines, the spirit of wild life protection 
exists. Elsewhere there is much more to be said on this point. To all 
cosmopolitan sportsmen, the British "Blue Book" on game protection, 
the annual reports of the two great protective societies of London, and 
the annual " Progress" report of the U. S. Department of Agriculture are 
reassuring and comforting. It is good to know that Uganda maintains 
a Department of Game Protection (A. L. Butler, Superintendent), that 
so good a man as Maj. J. Stevenson-Hamilton is in control of protection 
in the Transvaal, and that even the native State of Kashmir officially 
recognizes the need to protect the Remnant. 

There are of course many parts of the world in which game laws and 
limits to slaughter are quite imknown : all of which is entirely wrong, and 
in need of quick correction. No state or nation can be accounted wholly 



248 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

civilized that fails to recognize the necessity to protect wild life. I anii 
tempted to make a list of the states and nations that were at latest 
advices destitute of game laws and game protectors, but I fear to da 
injustice through lack of the latest information. However, the time has 
come to search out delinquents, and hold up to each one a mirror that will 
reflect its shortcomings. 

Naturally, we are most interested in our own contingent of the Army- 
of the Defense. 

The United States Government. — To-day the feeHng in Congress-. 
toward the conservation of wild life and forests is admirable. Both, 
houses are fully awake to the necessity of saving while there is yet some- 
thing to be saved. The people of the United States may be assured that 
the national government is active and sympathetic in the prosecution 
of such conservation measures as it might justly be expected to promote. 
For example, during the past five years we have seen Congress take 
favorable action on the following important causes, nearly every one of 
which cost money: 

The saving of the American bison, in four National ranges. 

The creation of fifty-eight bird refuges. 

The creation of five great game preserves. 

The saving of the elk in Jackson Hole. 

The protection of the fur seal. 

The protection of the wild life of Alaska. 

There are many active friends of wild life who confidently expect to 
see this fine list gloriously rounded out by the passage in 1913 of an 
ideal bill for the federal protection of all migratory birds. To name the 
friends of wild life in Congress would require the printing of a list of at 
least two hundred names, and a history of the rise and progress of wild 
life conservation by the national government would fill a volume. Such 
a volume would be highly desirable. 

When the story of the national government's part in wild-life pro- 
tection is finally written, it will be found that while he was president, 
Theodore Roosevelt made a record in that field that is indeed enough to 
make a reign illustrious. He aided every wild-life cause that lay within 
the bounds of possibility, and he gave the vanishing birds and mammals 
the benefit of every doubt. He helped to establish three national bison 
herds, four national game preserves, fifty-three federal bird refuges, and 
to enact the Alaska game laws of 1902 and 1907. 

It was in 1904 that the national government elected to accept its 
share of the white man's burden and enter actively into the practical 
business of wild life protection. This special work, originally undertaken 
and down to the present vigorously carried on by Dr. Theodore S. Palmer, 
has considerably changed the working policy of the Biological Survey of 
the Department of Agriculture, and greatly influenced game protection 
throughout the states. The game protection work of that bureau is 
alone worth to the people of this country at least twenty times more per 




MADISON GRANT 

Secretary and Chairman Executive Committee, 

New York Zoological Society 



HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN 

President, New York Zoological 

Society 




JOHN F. LACEY 

Ex-Member of Congress; Author of the 

"Lacey Bird Law" 


WILLIAM DUTCHER 
Founder and President, National Association 

of Audubon Societies 



MOTABLE PROTECTORS OF WILD LIFE (I) 



250 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

annum than the entire annual cost of the Bureau. Next to the splendid 
services of Dr. Palmer, all over the United States, one great value of the 
Bureau is found in the fact-and-figure ammunition that it prepares and 
distributes for general use in assaults on the citadels of Ignorance and 
Greed. The publications of the Bureau are of great practical value to 
the people of the United States. 

Dr. Palmer is a man of incalculable value to the cause of protection. 
No call for advice is too small to receive his immediate attention, no 
fight is too hot and no danger-point too remote to keep him from the fray. 
Wherever the Army of Destruction is making a particularly dangerous 
fight to repeal good laws and turn back the wheels of progress, there will 
he be found. As the warfare grows more intense, Congress may find it 
necessary to enlarge the fighting force of the Biological Survey. 

The work that has been done by the Bureau in determining the 
economic value or lack of value of our most important species of insectiv- 
orous birds, has been worth millions to the agricultural interests of the 
United States. Through it we know where we stand. The reasons why 
we need to strive for protection can be expressed in figures and percent- 
ages ; and it seems to me that they leave the American people no option 
but to protect! 

State Game Commissions. — Each of our states, and each province 
of Canada, maintains either a State Game Commission of several persons, 
one Commissioner, or a State Game Warden. All such officers are 
officially charged with the duty of looking after the general welfare of the 
game and other wild life of their respective states. Theoretically one 
of the chief duties of a State Game Commission is to initiate new legis- 
lative bills that are necessary, and advocate their translation into law. 
The official standing of most game commissioners is such that they can 
successfully do this. In 1909 Governor Hughes of New York went so 
far as to let it be known that he would sign no new game bill that did not 
meet the approval of State Game Commissioner James S. Whipple. As 
a general working principle, and quite aside from Mr. Whipple, that was 
wrong; because even a State game commissioner is not necessarily 
infallible, or always on the right side of every wild-life question. 

As a rule, state commissioners and state wardens are keenly alive to 
the needs of their states in new game protective legislation, and a large 
percentage of the best existing laws are due to their initiative. Often, 
however, their usefulness is limited by the trammels of public office, and 
there are times when such officers can not be too aggressive without the 
risk of arousing hostile influences, and handicapping their own depart- 
mental work. For this reason^ it is often advisable that bills which 
propose great and drastic reforms, and which are likely to become storm- 
centers, should originate outside the Commissioner's office, and be pushed 
by men who are perfectly free to abide the fortunes of open warfare. It 
should be distinctly understood, however, that lobbying in behalf of 
udld-life measures is an important part of the legitimate duty of every state 
game commissioner, and is a most honorable calling. 




EDWARD HOWE FORBUSH 

Massachusetts State 
Ornithologist 


T. GILBERT PEARSON 

Secretary, National Association of 
Audubon Societies 




JOHN B. BURNHAM 

President, American Game Protective and 

[Propagation Association 



ERNEST NAPIER 

President, Fish and Game Commission 

of New Jersey 



NOTABLE PROTECTORS OF WILD LIFE IL 



252 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Of the many strong and aggressive state game commissions that I 
would Hke to mention in detail, space permits the naming of only a very 
few, by way of illustration. 

New York. — Thanks to the great conservation Governor of this 
state, John A. Dix, the year 1911 saw our forest, fish and game business 
established on an ideal business basis. Realizing the folly of requiring 
a single man to manage those three great interests, and render to each the 
attention that it deserves and requires, by a well-studied legislative act 
a State Conservation Commission was created, consisting of three com- 
missioners, one for each of the three great natural departments. These 
are salaried officers, who devote their entire time to their work, and are 
properly equipped with assistants. The state force of game wardens now 
consists of 125 picked men, each on a salary of $900 per year, and through 
a rigid system of daily reports (inaugurated by John B. Burnham) the 
activities and results of each warden promptly become known in detail 
at headquarters. 

Fortunately, New York contains a very large number of true sports- 
men, who are ever ready to come forward in support of every great 
measure for wild-life protection. The spirit of real protection runs 
throughout the state, and in time I predict that it will result in a great 
recovery of the native game of the commonwealth. That will be after 
we have stopped all shooting of upland game birds and shore birds for 
about eight years. Even the pinnated grouse could be successfully 
introduced over one-third of the state, if the people would have it so. It was 
our great body of conscientious sportsmen who made possible the Bayne- 
Blauvelt law, and the new codification of the game laws of the state. 

Tennessee. — Clearly, Honorable Mention belongs to the unsalaried 
State Commissioner of Tennessee, Col. J. H. Acklen, "than whom," says 
Dr. Palmer, ' ' there is no more active and enthusiastic game protectionist 
in this country. Whatever has been accomplished in that state is due 
to his activity and public spirit. Col. Acklen, who is now president of the 
National Association of Game Commissioners, is a prominent lawyer, 
and enjoys the distinction of being the only commissioner in the country 
who not only serves without pay, but also defrays a large part of the 
expenses of game protection out of his own pocket." 

Surely the Commonwealth of Tennessee will not long permit this 
unsupported condition of such a game commissioner to endure. That 
state has a wild fauna worth preserving for her sons and grandsons, and 
it is inconceivable that the funds vitally necessary to this public service 
can not be found. 

Alabama. — I cite the case of Alabama because, in view of its position 
in a group of states that .until recently have cared little about game pro- 
tection, it may be regarded as an unusual case. Commissioner John H. 
Wallace, Jr., has evolved order out of chaos, — and something approaching 
a reign of law out of the absence of law. To-day the State of Alabama 
stands as an example of what can be accomplished by and through one 
clear-headed, determined man who is right, and knows that he is right. 



THE ARMY OF THE DEFENSE 253 

New Jersey.- — Alabama reminds one of New Jersey, and of State 
Game Commissioner Ernest Napier. I have seen him on the firing-line, 
and I know that his strong devotion to the interests of the wild life of his 
state, his determination to protect it at all costs, and his resistless con- 
fidence in asking for what is right, have made him a power for good. The 
state legislature believes in him, and enacts the laws that he says are right 
and necessary. He serves without salary, and gives to the state time, 
labor and money. It is a pleasure to work with such a man. In 1912 
Commissioner Napier won a pitched battle with the makers of auto- 
matic and puinp guns, both shotguns and rifles, and debarred all those 
weapons from use in hunting in New Jersey unless satisfactorily reduced 
to two shots. 

Massachusetts. — The state of Massachusetts is fortunate in the 
possession of a very fine corps of ornithologists, nature lovers, sportsmen 
and leading citizens who on all questions affecting wild life occupy high 
ground and are not afraid to maintain it. It would be a pleasure to write 
an entire chapter on this subject. The record of the Massachusetts 
Army of the Defense is both an example and an inspiraion to the people 
of other states. Not only is the cause of protection championed by the 
State Game Commission but it also receives constant and powerful 
support from the State Board of Agriculture, which maintains on its staff 
Mr. E. H. Forbush as State Ornithologist. The bird-protection publica- 
tions of the Board are of great economic value, and they are also an ever- 
lasting credit to the state. The very latest is a truly great wild-life- 
protection volume of 607 pages, by Mr. Forbush, entitled ''Game Birds, 
Wild-Fowl and Shore Birds." It is a publication most damaging to the 
cause of the Army of Destruction, and I heartily wish a million copies 
might be printed and placed in the hands of lawmakers and protectors. 

The fight last winter and spring for a no-sale-of-game law was the 
Gettysburg for Massachusetts. The voice of the People was heard in 
no uncertain tones, and the Destroyers were routed all along the line. 
The leaders in that struggle on the protection side were E. H. Forbush, 
William P. Wharton, Dr. George W. Field, Edward N. Coding, Lyman 
E. Hurd, Ralph Holman, Rev. Wm. R. Lord and vSalemi D. Charles. 
With such leaders and such supporters, any wild-life cause can be won, 
an^^where ! 

Pennsylvania. — The case of Pennsylvania is rather peculiar. As 
yet there is no large and resistless organized body of real sportsmen to 
rally to the support of the State Game Commission in great causes, as 
is the case in New York. As a result, with a paltry fund of only $20,000 
for annual maintenance, and much opposition from hunters and farmers, 
the situation is far from satisfactory. Fortuntely Dr. Joseph Kalbfus, 
Secretary of the Commission and chief executive officer, is a man of 
indomitable courage and determination. But for this state of mind he 
would ere this have given up the fight for the hunter's license law (of 
one dollar per year), which has been bitterly opposed by a very aggres- 
sive and noisy group of gimners who do not seem to know that they are 
grievously misled.. 



254 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Fortunately, Commissioner John M. Phillips, of Pittsburgh is the 
ardent supporter of Dr. Kalbfus and a vigorous fighter for justice to 
wild life. He devotes to the cause a great amount of time and effort, 
and in addition to serving without salary he pays all his campaign 
expenses out of his own pocket. His only recompense for all this is 
the sincere admiration of his friends, and the consciousness of having 
done his full duty toward the wild life and the people of his native 
state. 

The State Audubon Societies. — It is impossible to estimate the 
full value of the influence and work of the State Audubon Societies of 
the United States. Thus far these societies exist in thirty-nine states. 
From the beginning, their efforts have tended especially toward the pre- 
servation of the non-game birds, and it is well that the song and other 
insectivorous birds have thus been specially championed. Unfortu- 
nately, however, if that policy is pursued exclusively, it leaves 154 very 
important species of game birds practically at the mercy of the Army of 
Destruction! It would seem that the time has come when all Audubon 
Societies should take up, as a part of their work, active co-operation in 
helping to save the game birds from extermination. 

The National Organizations of New York City 

On January 1, 1895, the United States of America contained, so far 
as I am aware, not one organization of national scope which was devoting 
any large amount of its resources and activities to the protection of wild 
life. At that time the former activities of the A.O.U. Committee on 
Bird Protection had lapsed. To-day the city of New York contains six 
national organizations, and it is now a great center of nation-wide 
activities in behalf of preservation. Furtherinore, these activities are 
steadily growing, and securing practical results. 

The New York Zoological Society. — In 1895 there was born into 
the world a scientific organization having for its second declared object 
"the preservation of our native animals." It was the first scientific 
society or corporation ever formed, so far as I am aware, having a 
specifically declared object of that kind. It owes its existence and its 
presence in the field of wild-life conservation to the initiative and 
persistence of Mr. Madison Grant and Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn. 
For sixteen years these two officers have worked together virtually as 
one man. It is not strange to find a sportsman like Mr. Grant promoting 
the wild-life cause, but it is a fact well worthy of note that of all the 
zoologists of the world, Professor Osborn is the only one of real renown 
who has actively and vigorously engaged in this cause, and taken a place 
in the front rank of the Defenders. 

Mr. Grant's influence on the protection cause has been strong and 
far-reaching, — far more so than the majority of his own friends are aware. 
He has promoted important protectionist causes from Alaska to Louisiana 
and Newfoundland, and helj^ed to win many important victories. 

The Boone and Crockett Club. — This organization of big game 





JOSEPH KALBFUS 
Chief Game Protector and Secretary, Pennsyl- 
vania Board of Game Commissioners 



JOHX M. PHILLIPS 

Member, Pennsylvania Board of Game 

Commissioners 




EDWARD A. McILHENXV 

Founder of Wild-Fowl Preser\'es in 
Louisiana 



CHARLES WILLIS WARD 

Founder of Wild-Fowl Preser\'es in 

Louisiana 



NOTABLE PROTECTORS OF WILD LIFE till) 



256 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

sportsmen was founded in 1885, and is the oldest of its kind in the 
United States. Its members always have supported the cause of pro- 
tection, by law and by the making of game preserves. In all this work 
Mr. George Bird Grinnell, for twenty-five years editor of Forest and 
Stream, has been an important factor. As stated elsewhere, the club's 
written and unwritten code of ethics in big-game hunting is very strict. 
In course of time a Committee on Game Protection was formed, and it 
actively entered that field. 

The National Association of Audubon Societies. — This organi- 
zation was founded by William Dutcher, in 1902, and in 1906 it was 
endowed to the extent of $322,000 by the bequest of Albert Wilcox. 
Subsequent endowments, together with the annual contributions of 
members and friends, now give the Association an annual income of 
§60,000. It maintains eight widely-separated field agents and lecturers 
and forty special game wardens of bird refuges. It maintains Secretary 
T. Gilbert Pearson and a number of other good men constantly on the 
firing-line; and these forces have achieved many valuable results. After 
\'ears of stress and struggle, it now seems almost certain that this organi- 
zation will save the two white egrets, — producers of "the white badge of 
cruelty," — to the bird fauna of the United States, as in a similar manner 
it has saved the gulls, terns and other sea birds of our lakes and coast line. 

This splendid organization is one of the monuments to William 
Dutcher. More than two years ago he was stricken with paralysis, and 
now sits in an invalid's chair at his home in Plainfield, New Jersey. His 
mind is clear and his interest in wild-life protection is keen, but he is 
unable to speak or to write. While he was active, he was one of the most 
resourceful and fearless champions of the cause of the vanishing birds. 
To him the farmers of America owe ten times more than they ever will 
know, and a thousand times more than they ever will repay, either to 
him or to his cause. 

The Camp-Fire Club of America. — Although founded in 1897, 
this organization did not, as an organization, actively enter the field of 
protection until 1909. Since that time its work has covered a wide field, 
and enlisted the activities of many of its members. In order to provide 
a permanent fund for its work, each year the club members pay special 
annual dues that are devoted solely to the wild-life cause. The Committee 
on Game Protective Legislation and Preserves is a strong, hard-working 
body, and it has rendered good service in the lines of activity named in 
its title. 

The American Game Protective and Propagation Association. 
— This is the youngest protective organization of national scope, having 
been organized in 1911. Its activities are directed by John B. Burnham, 
for five years Chief Game Protector of the State of New York, and a 
man thoroughly conversant with the business of protection. The 
organization is financed chiefly by means of a large annual fund contrib- 
uted by several of the largest companies engaged in manufacturing 
firearms and ammunition, whose directors feel that the time has come 



THE ARMY OF THE DEFENSE 257 

when it is both wise and necessary to take practical measures to preserve 
the remnant of American game. Already the activities of this organiza- 
tion cover a wide range, and it has been particularly active in enlisting 
support for the Weeks bill for the federal protection of migratory birds. 

The Wild Life Protective Association came into existence in 
1910, rather suddenly, for the purpose of promoting the cause of the 
Bayne no-sale-of-game bill, and other measures. It raised the fund that 
met the chief expenses of that campaign. Since that time it has taken 
an important part in three other hotly contested campaigns in other 
states, two of which were successful. 

At the present moment, and throughout the future, these New York 
organizations need large sums of money with which to meet the legitimate 
expenses of active campaigns for great measures. They need some 
money from outside the state of New York! Too much of the burden of 
national campaigning has been and is being left to be borne by the people 
of New York City. This policy is growing monotonous. There is every 
reason why Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, 
Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston should each year turn $100,000 
into the hands of these well-equipped and well managed national organi- 
zations whose officers know how to get results, all over our country. 

Such organizations as these do not exist in other cities; and this is 
very unfortunate. New Orleans should be a center of protectionist 
activity for the South, San Francisco for the Pacific slope, and Chicago 
for the Middle West. Will they not become so? 

Two Independent Workers. — At the western edge of the delta of 
the Mississippi there have arisen two men who loom up into promi- 
nence at an outpost of the Army of Defense which they themselves have 
established. For what they already have done in the creation of wild- 
fowl preserves in Louisiana, Edward A. Mcllhenny and Charles Willis 
Ward deserve the thanks of the American People-at-large. An account 
of their splendid activities, and the practical results already secured, will 
be found in Chapter XXXVIII, on "Private Game Preserves," and in 
the story of Marsh Island. Already the home of these gentlemen, 
Avery Island, Louisiana, has become an important center of activity in 
wild -life protection. 



CHAPTER XXVII 
HOW TO MAKE A NEW GAME LAW 

The Line of Action. — In the face of a calamity, the saving of life 
and property and the check of fire and flood depends upon good judg- 
ment and quick action at the critical moment. In emergencies, the slow 
and academic method will not serve. It is the run, the jump, the short 
cut and the violent method that saves life. If a woman is drowning, the 
sensible man does not wait for an introduction to her; nor does he run 
to an acquaintance to borrow his boat, or stop to put on a collar and 
necktie. He seizes the first boat that he can find, and breaks its lock 
and chain if necessary ; or, failing that, he plunges in without one. When 
he reaches the imperiled party, he doesn't say, "Will you kindly let me 
save you?" He seizes her by the hair, and tries to keep her head above 
water, without ceremony. 

That is to-day the condition and the treatment necessary regarding 
our remnant of wild life. We are compelled to act quickly, directly, and 
even violently at times, if we save anything worth while. 

There is no time to depend upon the academic "education" of the 
public by the seductive illustrated lecture on birds, or the article about 
the habits of mammals. Those methods are all well enough in their 
places, but we must not depend upon them in emergencies like the present, 
for they do not pass laws or arrest lawbreakers. Give the public all of 
that material that you can supply, and the more the better, but for 
heaven's sake do not depend upon the spread of bird-lore "education" 
to stop the work of the game-hogs! If you do, all the wild life will be 
destroyed while the educational work is going on. 

Often you can educate a gunner, and make him a protectionist; 
but you never can do it by showing him pictures of birds. He needs 
strong reasoning and exhortation, not bird-lore. To-day it is necessary 
to employ the most direct, forceful and at times even rude methods. 
Where slaughtering cannot be stopped by moral suasion, it must be 
stopped with a hickory club. The thing to do is to get results, and get 
them quickly, before it is too late! 

If the business section of a town is burning down, no one goes into 
the suburbs to lecture on architecture, or exhibit pictures of fire appa- 
ratus. The rush is for water, fire-engines, red-blooded men and dynamite. 
When the birds all around you are being shot to death by poachers who 
fear not God nor regard man, and you need help to stop it on the instant, 
run to your neighbor's house, and ring his bell. If he fails to hear the 
bell, pound on his door until you jar the whole house. 



HOW TO MAKE A NEW GAME LAW 259 

When he comes down half-dressed, bUnking and rubbinj^ his eyes, 
shout at him: 

"Come out! Your birds are all being shot to pieces!" 

"Are they?" he will say. " But what can / do about it? I can't help 
it! I'm no game warden." 

"Put on your clothes, get your shot-gun and come out and drive off 
the killing gang. 

"But what good will that do? They will come back again." 

"Not if we do our duty. We must have theni arrested, and appear 
against them in court." 

" But," says the sleepy citizen, "That won't do much good. The laws 
are not strict enough; and besides, they are not well enforced, even as 
they are ! ' ' 

"Then let's make it our business to see that the present laws are 
enforced, and go to our members of the legislature, and have them pass 
some stronger laws." 

And this brings me to a very important subject: 

How TO Pass a New Law 

We venture to say that the average citizen little realizes how possible 
it is to secure the passage of a law that is clearly necessary for the better 
protection of wild life and forests. Because of this, and of the necessity 
for exact knowledge, I shall here set down specific instructions on this 
subject. 

The Personal Equation. — One determined man can secure the 
passage of a good law, provided he is reasonably intelligent and suffi- 
ciently detennined. The man who starts a movement must make up his 
mind to follow it up, direct its fortunes, stay with it when the storms of 
opposition beat upon it, and nc\'er giA^e up until it is signed by the gov- 
ernor. He must be willing to sacrifice his personal convenience, many 
of his pleasures, and work when his friends are asleep or pleasuring. 

In working for the protection of wild life there is one mighty and un- 
failing source of consolation. It is this: 

Your cause always gains in strength, and the cause of the destroyers 
always loses strength! 

The Choice of a Cause.- — Be broad-minded. Do not rush to the 
legislature with a demand for a law to pcnnit the taking of bull-heads 
with June-bugs in the creeks of your township, or to give your county a 
specially early open season on quail in order that your boy may try his 
new gun before he goes back to college. Don't propose any "local" 
legislation; for in progressive states, local game legislation is coming 
strongly into disfavor, — just as it should! Legislate for your whole 
state, and nothing less. 

Do not bother your legislature with a trivial bill. Choose a cause 
ihat is worth while to grown men, and it shall be well with you It takes 



260 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

no more time to pass a large bill than a small one; and big men prefer to 
be identified with big measures. 

Before you have a bill drawn, advise with men whose opinions are 
worth having. If the end you have in mind is a great and good one, go 
ahead, whether you secure support in advance or not. If the needs of 
the hour clearly demand the measure, go ahead, even though you start 
absolutely alone. A good measure never goes far without attracting 
company. 

Drafting a Bill. — As a rule, the members of a legislative body do 
not have time to draft bills on subjects that are new or strange to them. 
A short bill is easily prepared by your own representative ; but a lengthy 
bill, covering a serious reform, is a different matter. Hire a lawyer to 
draft the bill for you. A really good lawyer will not charge much for 
drafting a bill that is to benefit the public, and grind no private axe; but 
if the bill is long, and requires long study, even the good citizen must 
charge something. 

Your bill must fully recognize existing laws. It must be either pro- 
hibitory or permissive; which means that it can say what shall not be 
done, or else that which may be done according to law, all other acts 
being forbidden. Your lawyer must decide which form is best. For my 
part, I greatly prefer the prohibitive form, as being the stronger and more 
impressive of the two. I think it is the province of the law to forbid the 
destruction of wild life and forests, under penalties. 

Penalties. — Every law should provide a penalty for its infringe- 
ment; but the penalty should not be out of all proportion to the offense. 
It is just as unwise to impose a fine of one dollar for killing song-birds for 
food as it is to provide for a fine of three hundred dollars. A fine that is 
too small fails to impress the prisoner, and it begets contempt for the 
law and the courts! A fine that is altogether too high is apt to be set 
aside by the court as "excessive." In my opinion, the best fines for wild 
life slaughter would be as follows: 

Shooting, netting or trapping song-birds, and other non-game 

birds, each bird $5 to $25 

Killing game birds out of season, each bird 10 to 50 

Selling game contrary to law, each offense 100 to 200 

Dynamiting fish 100 to 200 

Seining or netting game fishes 50 to 200 

Shooting birds with unfair weapons 10 to 100 

Killing an egret, Carolina parakeet or whooping c^ane 100 to 200 

Killing a mountain sheep or antelope anywhere in the U. S 500 

Killing an elk contrary to law 50 

Killing a female deer, or fawn without horns, each offense 50 

Trapping a grizzly bear for its skin 1 00 

For killing a man "by mistake," the fine should be $500, payable 
in five annual instalments, to the court, for the family of the victim. 

Whenever fines are not paid, the convicted party should be sentenced 
to imprisonment at hard labor at the rate of one-half day for each dollar 



HOW TO MAKE A NEW GAME LAW 261 

of the fine imposed; and a sentence at iiard labor should be the first 
option of the court! Many a rich and reckless poacher snaps his fingers at 
fines ; but a sentence to hard labor would strike terror to the heart of the 
most brazen of them. To all such men, "labor" is the twin terror to 
"death." 

The Introduction of a Bill. — Much wisdom is called for in the 
selection of legislative champions for wild-life bills. It is possible to 
state here only the leading principles involved. 

Of course it is best to look for an introducer within the political 
party that is in the majority. A man who has many important bills on 
his hands is bound to give his best attention to his own pet measures; 
and it is best to choose a man who is not already overloaded. If a man 
has a host of enemies, pass him by. By all means choose a man whose 
high character and good name will be a tower of strength to your cause ; 
and if necessary, wait for him to make up his mind. Mr. Lawrence W. 
Trowbridge waited three long and anxious -weeks in the hope that Hon. 
George A. Blauvelt would finally consent to champion the Bayne bill 
in the New York Assembly. At last Mr. Blauvelt consented to take it 
up; and the time spent in waiting for his decision was a grand invest- 
ment ! He was the Man of all men to pilot that bill through the Assembly. 

Very often the "quiet man" of a legislative body is a good man to 
champion a new and drastic measure. The quiet man who makes up 
his mind to take hold of " a hard bill to pass " often astonishes the natives 
by his ability to get results. Representative John F. Lacey, of Iowa, made 
his name a household word all over the United States by the quiet, steady, 
tireless and finally resistless energy with which for three long years in 
Congress he worked for "the Lacey bird bill." For years his colleagues 
laughed at him, and cheerfully voted down his bill. But he persisted. 
His cause steadily gained in strength; and his final triumph laid the axe 
at the root of a thousand crimes against wild life, throughout the length 
and breadth of this land. He rendered the people of America a service 
that entitles him to our everlasting gratitude and remembrance. 

After the Introduction of a Bill. — As soon as a bill is introduced 
it is referred to a committee, to be examined and reported upon. If there 
is opposition, — and to every bill that really does something worth while 
there always is opposition, — then there is a "hearing." The committee 
appoints a day, when the friends and foes of the bill assemble, and ex- 
press their views. 

The week preceding a hearing is your busy week. Yovi must plan 
your campaign, down to the smallest details. Pick the men whom you 
wish to have speak (for ten minutes each) on the various parts of your 
bill, and divide the topics and the time between them. Call upon the 
friends of the bill in various portions of the state to attend and "say 
something." Go up with a strong body of fine men. Have as many 
organizations represented as you possibly can! The "organizations" 
represent the great mass of people, and the voters also. 

When you reach the hearing, hand to your bill's champion, who v.nl\ 



262 QUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

be floor manager for your side, a clear and concise list of your speakers, 
carefully arranged and stating who's who. That being done, you have 
only to fill your own ten minutes and afterward enjoy the occasion. 

The Value of Accuracy. — It is unnecessary to say, in working for 
a bill, — always be sure of your facts. Never let your opponents catch you 
tripping in accuracy of statement. If you make one serious error, your 
enemies will turn it against you to the utmost. Better understate facts 
than overstate them. This shrewd old world quickly recognizes the 
•careful, conservative man whose testimony is so true and so rock-founded 
that no assaults can shake it. Legislators are quick to rely on the words 
and opinions of the man who can safely be trusted. If your enemies 
try to overwhelm you with extravagant statements, that are unfair to 
your cause, the chances are that the men who judge between you will 
recognize them by their ear-marks, and discount them accordingly. 

Work with Members. — Sometimes a subject that is put before a 
legislative body is so new, and the thing proposed is so drastic, it becomes 
necessary to take measures to place a great many facts before each mem- 
ber of the body. Under such circumstances the member naturally desires 
to be "shown." The cleanest and finest campaigning for a reform 
measure is that in which both sides deal with facts, rather than with 
personal importunities. With a good cause in hand, it is a pleasure to 
prepare concise statements of facts and conditions from which a legis- 
lator may draw logical conclusions. Whenever a bill can be won through 
in that way, game protection work becomes a delight. 

In all important new measures affecting the rights and the property 
of the whole people of a state, the conscientious legislator wishes to 
know how the people feel about it. When you tell him that "The wild 
life belongs to the whole people of the state; and this bill is in their 
interest," he needs to know for certain that your proposition is true. 
Sometimes there is only one way in which he can be fully convinced; 
and that is by the people of his district. 

Then it becomes necessary to send out a general alarm, and call upon 
the People to write to their representatives and express their views. 
Give them, in printed matter, the latest facts in the case, forecast the 
future as you think it should be forecast, then demand that the men and 
women who are interested do write to their senators and assemblyman, 
and express their views, in their own way! Let there be no "machine 
letters" sent out, all ready for signature; for such letters are a waste of 
effort, and belong in the waste baskets to which they are quickly con- 
signed. The members of legislative bodies hate them, and rightly, too. 
They want to hear from men who can think for themselves, give reasons 
of their own, and express their desires in their own way. 

The Press and the Newspapers. — It is impossible to overestimate 
the influence of the newspapers and the periodical press in general, in 
the protection of wild life. But for their sympathy, their support and 
their independent assaults upon the Army of Destruction, our game 
species would nearly all of them have been annihilated, long ago. Editors 



HOW TO MAKE A NEW GAME LAW 



263 



are sympathetic and responsive good-citizens, as keenly sensitive re- 
garding their duties as any of the rest of us are, and from the earliest 
times of protection they have been on the firing line, helping to beat 
back the destroyers. It is indeed a rare sight to see an editor giving aid, 
comfort or advice to the enemy. I can not recall more than a score of 
articles that I have seen or heard of during thirty years in this field 
that opposed the cause of wild life protection.* At this moment, for 
instance, I bear in particularly grateful remembrance the active cam- 
paign work of the following newspapers: 



The New York Times 

The New York Tribune 

The New York Herald 

The New York Globe 

The New York Mail and Expiess 

The New York World 

The New York Sun 

The Springfield (Mas;^.) Republican 

The Chicaeo Inter-Ocean 

The vSan Francisco Call 

The Rochester Union and Advertiser 



The Victo'ia Colonist 

The Brooklyn Standa id-Union 

The New Yo-k Evening Posr 

The New York Press 

The Buffalo News 

The Minneapolis Journal 

The Pittsburgh Index-Appeal 

The St. Louis Globe-Democrat 

The Philadel])hia North Amencju 

The Utica Observer 

The Washington Star. 



These magazines have done good service in the, cause; and some of 
them have spent many years on the firing line: 



Forest and Stream 
The American Field 
Field and Stream 
Recreation (old and new; 
Rod and Gun in Canada 
In the Open 



Sports Afield 
Western Field 
Outdoor Life 
Shield's Magazine 
Sportsman's Review 
Outing 



Collier's Weekly 
The Independent 
Country Life 
Outdoor World 
Bird Lore 



In cainpaigning, always appeal for the help of the newspapers. If 
there are no private axes to grind, they help generously. The weekly 
journals are of value, but the monthlies are printed so long in advance 
of their dates of issue that they seldom move fast enough to keep abreast 
of the procession. Their mechanical limitations are many and serious. 

Every newspaper likes "exclusive" news, letters and articles. On 
that basis they will print about all the live matter that you can furnish. 
But at the same time, the important news of the campaign must be sent 
to the press broadcast, in the form of printed slips all ready for the fore- 
man. Many of these are never used, but the others are; and it pays. 
The news in every slip must be vouched for by the sender, or it will not 
be used. Often it will appear as a letter signed by the sender; which is 
all right, only the news is most effective when printed without a signature. 
Do not count on the Associated Press; because its peculiar demands 
render it almost impossible for it to be utilized in game protection work. 

How TO Meet Opposition. — There is no rule for the handling of 
opposition that is fair and open. For opposition that is unfair and under- 

* Just one hour after the above paragraph was written, a long telegram from San 
Francisco advised me that the Examiner of that city had begun an active and aggressive 
campaign for the sale of all kinds of game. 



264 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

handed, there is one powerful weapon, — PubHcity. The American 
people love fair play, and there is nothing so fatal to an unfair fighter as 
a searchlight, turned full on him without fear and without mercy. If it 
is reliably and persistently reported that some citizen who ought to be 
on the right side has for some dark reason become active on the wrong 
side, print the reports in a large newspaper, and ask him publicly if they 
are true. If the reports are false, he can quickly come out in a letter and 
say so, and end the matter. If they are true, the public will soon know it, 
and act accordingly. 

Eternal Vigilance. — The progress of a bill must be watched by some 
competent person from day to day, and finally from hour to hour. I 
know one bill that was saved from defeat only because its promoter 
dragged it, almost by force, out of the hands of a tardy clerk, and accom- 
panied it in person to the senate, where it was passed in the last hour of 
a session. 

A bill should not be left to a long slumber in the drawer of a com- 
mittee. Such delays nearly always are dangerous. 

Signing the Bill. — The promoter of a great measure always seeks the 
sympathy of the Chief Executive early in the day ; but he should not make 
the diplomatic error of trying to exact promises or pledges in advance. 
Good judges do not give away their decisions in advance. 

Because a Chief Executive remarks after a bill has been sent to him 
for signing that he "cannot approve it," it is no reason to give up in 
despair. Many an executive approval has been snatched at the last 
moment, as a brand from the burning. Ask for a hearing before the bill 
is acted upon. At the hearing, and before it and after, the People who 
wish the bill to become a law must express themselves, — by letter, by 
telegram, and by appeal in person. If the governor becomes convinced 
that an overwhelming majority of his people desire him to sign the bill, 
he will sign it, even though personally he is opposed to it ! The hall mark 
of a good governor is a spirit of obedience to the will of the great majority. 

Not until your bill has been signed by the governor are you ready to 
go home with a quiet mind, take off your armor, and put your ear to the 
telephone while you hear some one say as your only reward, — "Well done, 
good and faithful servant." 

As TO "Credit." — Do not count upon receiving any credit for what 
you do in the cause of game protection, outside the narrow circle of your 
own family and your nearest frieniis. This is a busy world; and the 
human mind flits like a restless bird from one subject to another. The 
men who win campaigns are forgotten by the general public, in a few 
hours ! There is nothing more fickle or more fleeting than the bubble 
called "popular applause." Judging by the experiences of great men, I 
should say that it has no substance, whatever. The most valuable re- 
ward of the man who fights in a great cause, and helps to win victories, is 
the profound satisfaction that comes to every good citizen who braveh^ 
does his whole duty, and leaves the world better than he found it, with- 
out the slightest thought of gallery applause. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 
NEW LAWS NEEDED: A ROLL-CALL OF THE STATES 

The principles of wild-life protection and encouragement are now so 
firmly established as to leave little room for argument regarding their 
value. When they are set forth before the people of any given state, 
the only question is of willingness to do the right thing; of duty or a 
defiance of duty; of good citizenship or the reign of selfishness. Men 
who do not wish to do their duty purposely befog great issues by noisy 
talk and tiresome academic discussions of trivial details; and such men 
are the curse and scourge of reform movements. 

There are a very few persons who foolishly assert that ' ' there are too 
many game laws!" It is entirely wrong for any person to make such a 
statement, for it tends to promote harmful error. The fact that our laws 
are too lenient, or are not fully enforced, is no excuse for denouncing their 
purposes. We have all along been too timid, too self indulgent, and too 
much afraid of hurting the feelings of the game-hogs. 

Give me the power to make the game laws of any state or province 
and I will guarantee to save the non-migratory wild life of that region 
I will not only make adequate laws, but I will also provide means, men 
and penalties by which they will he enforced! It is easy and simple, for 
men who are not afraid. 

I have been at considerable pains to analyze the game laws of each 
state, ascertain their shortcomings, and give a list of the faults that need 
correction by new legislation. It has required no profound wisdom to 
do this, because the principles involved are so plain that any intelligent 
schoolboy fifteen years old can master them in one hour. I have per- 
formed this task hopefully, in the belief that in many states the real 
issues have not been plainly put before the people. Hereafter no state 
shall destroy its wild life through ignorance of the laws that would pre- 
serve it. 

Let no man say that " it is too late to save the wild life " ; for excepting 
the dead-and-gone species, that is not true. Let no man say that "we 
can not save the wild life by law"; for that is not true, either. As long 
as laws are lax, even law-abiding people will take advantage of them. 

There are millions of men who think it is right to kill all the game that 
the law allows! There are thousands of women who think it is right to 
wear aigrettes as long as the law permits their sale! And yet, if we are 
resolute and diligent there is plenty of hope for the future. During the 
past three years, to go no farther back, we have seen the whole state of 
New York swept clean of the traffic in native wild game by the Bayne 



266 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

law, and of the traffic in wild birds' plumage on women's hats through 
the Dutcher law. To-day, in this state, we find ninty-nine women out of 
every one hundred wearing flowers, and laces, and plush and satin on 
their hats, instead of the heads, bodies and feathers of wild birds that 
were the regular thing until three years ago. The change has been a 
powerful commentary on the value of good laws for the protection of 
wild life. The Dutcher law has caused the plumage of wild biids almost 
wholly to disappear from the State of New York! 

We shall here point out the plain duty of each state; and then it will 
be up to them, individually, to decide whether they can stand the blood- 
test or not. 

A state or a nation can be ungentlemanly, unfair or mean, just the 
same as an individual. No state has a right to maintain shambles for 
the slaughter of migratory game or song birds that belong in part to 
sister states. Every state holds its migratory bird life in trust, for the benefit 
of the people of the nation at large. A state is just as responsible for its 
treatment of wild life as any individual ; and it is time to open books of 
account. 

It is robbery, as well as murder, for any southern state to slaughter 
the robins of the northern states, where no robins may be killed. No 
southern gentleman can permit such doings, after the crime has been pointed 
out to him! In the North, the men who are caught shooting robins are 
instantly haled to court, and fined or imprisoned. If we of the North 
should kill^ for food the mockingbirds that visit us, the people of the 
South instantly would brand us as monsters of greed and meanness ; and 
they would be perfectly justified in so doing. 

Let us at least be honest in "agreeing upon a state of fact," as the 
lawyers say, whether we act sensibly and mercifully or not. Just so long 
as there remains in this land of ours a fauna of game birds, and the 
gunners of one-half the states are allowed to dictate the laws for the 
slaughter of it, just so long will our present protection remain utterly 
absurd and criminally inadequate. Look at these absurdities: 

New York, New Jersey and many other northern states rigidly prohibit 
the late winter and spring shooting of waterfowl and shore birds, and 
limit the bag; North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and other 
southern states not only slaughter wild fowl and shore birds all winter 
and spring, without limit, but several of them kill certain non-game 
birds besides! 

All the northern states protect the robin, for the good that it does; 
but in North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana and some other 
southern states, thousands of robins are shot for food. Minnesota has 
stopped spring shooting; but her sister state on the south, Iowa, obsti- 
nately refuses to do so. 

The United States at Large. — There are two great measures that 
should be carried into effect by the governing body of the United States. 
One is the enactment of a law providing federal protection for all migratory 



STATE ROLL-CALL FOR NEW LAWS 267 

birds; and Canada and Mexico should be induced to join with the United 
States m an international treaty to that effect. 

The other necessary measure is the passage of a joint resolution of 
Congress declaring every national forest and forest reserve also a game 
preserve and general sanctuary for wild life, in which there shall be no 
hunting or killing of wild creatures of any kind save predatory animals. 

The tendency of the times, — and the universal slaughter of wild life 
on this continent, — point straight as an arrow flies in that direction. 
vSoon or late, we have GOT to come to it! If Congress does not take the 
initiatory steps, the People will! Such a consummation is necessary; 
it is justified by common sense and the inexorable logic of the situation, 
and when done it will be right. 

The time was when the friends of wild life did not dare speak of this 
subject in Washington save in whispers. That was in the days when the 
Appalachian Park bill could not be passed, and when there were angry 
mutterings and even curses leveled against Gilford Pinchot and the 
Forestry Bureau because so many national forests were being set aside. 
That was in the days when a few western sheep-men thought that they 
owned the whole Rocky Mountains without having bought them. 
To-day, the American people have grown accustomed to the idea of 
having the resources of the public domain saved and conserved for the 
benefit of the millions rather than lavished upon a favored few. To-day 
it is perfectly safe to talk about making every national forest a first class 
wild-life sanctuary, and it is up to the People to request Congress to take 
that action, at once. 

The Weeks bill, the Anthony bill, and the McLean bill now before 
Congress to provide federal protection for migratory birds are practically 
identical. All three are good bills; and it matters not which one finally 
becomes a law. Whichever is put forward finally for passage should 
provide federal protection for all migratory birds that ever enter the 
United States, Alaska, or Porto Rico. Why favor the duck and leave 
the robin to its fate, or vice versa? It will be just as easy to do this task 
by wholes as by halves. The time to hesitate, to feel timid, or to be 
afraid of the other fellow has gone by. To-day the millions of honest 
and serious-minded Americans are ready to back the most thorough an d 
most drastic policy, because that has become the most necessary and the 
best policy. Furthermore, it is the only policy worthy of serious con- 
sideration. 

Some of our states ha\-e done rather well in wild-life protection, — 
considering the absurdity of our national policy as a whole; others have 
done indifferently, and some have been and still are very remiss. Here 
is where we intend to hew to the line, and without fear or favor set forth 
the standing of each state according to its merits or its lack of merits. 
In a life-or-death matter such as now confronts us regarding the wild 
life of our country, it is time to speak plainly. 

In the following call of the States, the glaring deficiencies in state 
game laws will be set forth in detail, in order that the sore spots may be 



268 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

exposed to the view of the doctors. Conditions will be represented as 
they exist at the end of the summer of igi2, and it is to be hoped that these 
faults soon may be corrected. 

A Roll-Call of the States 
Alabama : 

It is a satisfaction to be able to open this list with the name of a state 
that is entitled to a medal of honor for game protection. In this particular 
field of progress and enlightenment, the state of Alabama is the pioneer 
state of the South. New York now occupies a similar position in the 
North; but New York is an older state, and stronger in her general love 
of nature. The attainment of advanced protection in any southern 
state is a very different matter from what it is in the North. 

Five years ago Alabama set her house in order. The slaughter of 
song and insectivorous birds has been so far stopped as any Southern 
state can stop it unaided by the federal government, and those birds are 
recognized and treated as the farmers' best friends. The absurd system 
of attempted protection through county laws has been abandoned. The 
sale of game has been stopped, and since that stoppage, quail have in- 
creased. The trapping and export of game have ceased, and wild 
turkeys and woodcock are now increasing. It is unlawful to kill or 
capture non-game birds. Bag limits have been imposed, but the bag 
limit laws are all too liberal, and should be reduced. A hunter's license law 
is in force, and the department of game and fish is self-supporting. Night 
hunting is prohibited, and female deer may not be killed. A compre- 
hensive warden system has been provided. As yet, however, Alabama 

Permits the shooting of waterfowl to March 15, which is too late, by one and one- 
half months. 

The use of automatic and pump guns in hunting should be suppressed. 

There should be a limit of two deer per year, and killing should be restricted to 
deer with horns not less than three inches long. 

The story of game protection in Alabama began in 1907. Prior to 
that time, the slaughter of wild life was very great. It is known that 
enormous numbers of quail were annually killed by negro farm hands, 
who hunted at least three days each week, regardless of work to be done. 
The slaughter of quail, wild ducks woodcock, doves, robins and snipe 
was described as "nauseating." 

The change that has been wrought since 1907 is chiefly due to the 
efforts of one man. Alabama owes her standing to-day to the admirable 
qualities of John H. Wallace, Jr., her Game and Fish Commissioner, 
author of the State's policy in wild-life conservation. His broad-minded- 
ness, his judgment and his success make him a living object lesson of the 
power of one determined man in the conservation of wild life. 

Commissioner Wallace is an ardent supporter of the Weeks and 
Anthony bills for federal protection, and as a lawj^er of the South, he 
believes there is "no constitutional inhibition against federal legislation 
for the protection of birds of passage." 



STATE ROLL-CALL FOR NEW LAWS 269 



Alaska: 



The sale of game must be absolutely prohibited, forever. 

The slaughter of big game Ijy Indians, miners and prospectors should now be 
limited, and strictly regulated by law, on rational lines. 

The slaughter of walrus for ivory and hides, both in the Alaskan and Russian 
waters of Bering Sea, should be totally prohibited for ten years. 

The game-warden service should be quadrupled in number of wardens, and in 
general effectiveness. 

The game-warden service should be supplied with two sea-going vessels, inde- 
pendent for patrol work. 

The bag limit on hoofed game is 50% too large. 

To accomplish these ends. Congress should annually appropriate .$50,000 for the 
protection of wild life in Alaska. The present amount, $15,000, is very inadequate, 
and the great wild-life interests at stake amply justify the larger amount. 

It is now time for Alaska to make substantial advances in the pro- 
tection of her wild life. It is no longer right nor just for Indians, miners 
and prospectors to be permitted by law to kill all the big game they 
please, whenever they please. The indolent and often extortionate 
Indians of Alaska, — who now demand "big money" for every service 
they perform, — are not so valuable as citizens that they should be per- 
mitted to feed riotously upon moose, and cow moose at thai, until that 
species is exterminated. Miners and prospectors are valuable citizens, 
but that is no reason why they should forever be allowed to live upon 
wild game, any more than that hungry prospectors in our Rocky Moun- 
tains should be allowed to kill cattle. 

Alaska and its resources do not belong to the very few people from 
the States ' ' who have gone there to make their fortunes and get out 
again as quickly as possible. The quicker the public mind north of 
Wrangel is disabused of that idea, the better. Its game belongs to the 
people of this nation of ninety-odd millions, and it is a safe prediction 
that the ninety millions will not continue to be willing that the miners, 
prospectors and Indians shall continue to live on moose meat and caribou 
tongues in order to save bacon and beef. 

Mr. Frank E. Kleinschmidt said to me that at Sand Point, Alaska, 
he saw eighty-two caribou tongues brought in by an Indian, and sold at 
fifty cents each, while (according to all accounts) most of the bodies of 
the slaughtered animals became a loss. 

Governor Clark has recommended in his annual report for 1911 that 
the protection now enjoyed by the giant brown bear (Ursus middendorffi) 
on Kadiak Island be removed, for the benefit of settlers and their stock! 
It goes without saying that no one proposes that predatory wild animals 
shall be permitted to retard the development of any wild country that 
is required by civilized man. All we ask in this matter is that, as in the 
case of the once-proposed slaughter of sea-lions on the Pacific Coast, 
the necessity of the proposed slaughter shall be fully and adequately proven 
before the killing begins! It is fair to insist that the sea-lion episode shall 
not be repeated on Kadiak Island. 



270 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

The big game of Alaska can not long endure against a "limit" of 
two moose, three mountain sheep, three caribou and six deer per year, 
per man. At that rate the moose and sheep soon will disappear. The 
limit should be one moose, two sheep, two caribou and four deer, — unless 
we are willing to dedicate the Alaskan big game to Commercialism. No 
sportsman needs a larger bag than the revised schedule ; and commercial- 
ists should not be allowed to kill big game anywhere, at any time. 

Let us bear in mind the fact that Alaska is being throughly "opened 
up" to the Man with a Gun. Here is the latest evidence, from the new 
circular of an outfitter : 

" I will have plenty of good horses, and good, competent and courteous 
guides; also other camp attendants if desired. My intention is to estab- 
lish permanently at that point, as I believe it is the gateway to the finest 
and about the last of the great game countries of North America." 

The road is open; the pack-train is ready; the guides are waiting. 
Go on and slay the Remnant ! 

Arizona: 

The band-tailed pigeons and all non-game birds should immediately be given pro" 
tection; and a salaried warden system should be established under a Commissioner 
whose term is not less than four years. 

The use of automatic and pump guns, in hunting, should be prohibited. 

Spring shooting should be prohibited. 

Arizona has good reason to be proud of her up-to-date position in the 
ranks of the best game-protecting states. No other state or territory 
of her age ever has made so good a showing of protective laws. The 
enactment of laws to cover the points mentioned above would leave 
little to be desired in Arizona. That state has a bird fauna well worth 
protecting, and game wardens are extremely necessary. 

Arkansas : 

The enforcement of game laws should be placed in charge of a salaried commissioner. 

Spring shooting of wildfowl should be stopped at once. 

A reasonable close season should be provided for water fowl, and swans should be 
protected throughout the year. 

A bag-limit law should be enacted. 

A force of game wardens, salaried and unsalaried, should at once be created. 

The killing of female deer and the hounding of deer, should be stopped. 

No buck deer should be shot, unless horns three inches long are seen before firing. 

A hunter's license law is necessary; and the fees should go to the support of the 
game protection department. 

The local exemptions in favor of market hunters in Mississippi county should be 
repealed. 

It appears that in Arkansas the laws for the protection and increase 
of wild life are by no means up to the mark. At this moment, Arkansas 
is next to Florida, the rearmost of all our states in wild-life protection. 
Awake. Arkansas! Consider the peril that threatens }'our faima. The 



STATE ROLL-CALL FOR NEW LAWS 271 

Sunk Lands, in your northeastern corner along the St. Francis River, are 
the greatest wild-fowl refuge anywhere in the Mississippi Valley between 
the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and the breeding-grounds of Minnesota. 
A duty to the nation devolves upon you, to protect the migratory water- 
fowl that visit your great bird refuge from the automatic and pump guns 
of the pothunters who shoot for northern markets, and kill all that they 
can kill. Protect those Sunken Lands! Confer a boon on all the people 
of the Mississippi Valley by making that region a bird refuge in fact as 
well as in name. 

Heretofore, you have permitted hired market gunners from outside 
}'our borders to slaughter the wild-fowl of your Sunk Lands literally by 
millions, and ship them to northern markets, with very little benefit to 
your people. It is time for that slaughter to cease. Don't maintain a 
duck and goose shambles in Mississippi County, year after year, as North 
Carolina does ! Do unto other states as you would have other states do 
unto you. Do not be afraid to pass nine good laws in one act. Clear 
your record in the Family of States, and save your fauna before it is too 
late. It is not fair for you to permit the slaughter of the insectivorous 
birds that are like the blood of life to the farmer and fruit grower. 

California: 

The sale of all wild game should be forever prohibited. 

The use of automatic and pump shotguns, in hunting, should be prohibited. 

The kihing of pigeons and doves as "game" and "food" should be stopped. 

The sage grouse and every other species of bird threatened with extinction should 
be given ten year close seasons. 

The mule deer (if any remain) and the Columbian black-tailed deer in the southern 
counties should be accorded a ten-year close season. 

A large state game preserve should be created immediately, on or near Mount Shasta 
and abundantly stocked with nucleus herds of antelope, black-tailed deer, bison and 
elk. 

A suitable preserve in the southern part of the state should be set aside for the 
dwarf elk. 

As game laws are generally regarded, California has on her books a 
series that look rather good to the e3^e, but which are capable of consider- 
able improvement. All along the line, the birds and quadrupeds of the 
Golden State are vanishing! Under that heading, a vigorous chapter 
could be written; but space forbids its development here. Just fancy 
laws that permit gunning and hunting with dogs, from August until 
January — one-half the entire year ! Think of the nesting birds that are 
disturbed or killed by dogs and gunners after other birds ! 

California's wild ducks and geese have been slaughtered to an extent 
almost beyond belief. The splendid sage grouse and the sharp-tailed 
grouse are greatly reduced in numbers. Of her hundreds of thousands 
of antelope, once the cheapest game in the market, scarcely "a trace" 
remains. Her mountain sheep and mule deer are almost extinct. Her 
grizzly bears are gone! 

The most terrible slaughter ever recorded for automatic guns occurred 



272 OVR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

in Glenn County, Cal., on Feb. 5, 1906, when two men (whose story was 
published in Outdoor Life, xvii, p. 371, April, 1906), killed 450 geese in 
one day, and actually bagged 218 of them in one hour! 

Every person who has paid attention to game protection on the 
Pacific coast well knows that during the past eight years or more, the 
work of game protection in California has been in a state of frequent 
turmoil. At times the lack of harmony between the State Fish and Game 
Commission and the sportsmen of the state has been damaging to the 
interests of wild life, and deplorable. In the case of Warden Welch, in 
Santa Cruz County, pernicious politics came near robbing the state of a 
splendid warden, but the courts finally overthrew the overthrowers of 
Mr. Welch, and reinstated him. 

The fish and game commissioners of any state should be broad- 
minded, non-partisan, strictly honest and sincere. So long as they possess 
these qualities, they deserve and should have the earnest and aggressive 
support of all sportsmen and all lovers of wild life. The remnant of wild 
life is entitled to a square deal, and harmony in the camp of its friends. 
Fortunately California has an excellent force of salaried game wardens 
(82 in all) and 577 volunteer wardens serving without salary. 

Colorado : 

The State of Colorado should instantly stop the sale of native wild game to be used 
as food. 

It should stop all late winter and spring shooting of native wild birds. 

It should give the sage grouse, pinnated grouse and all shore birds a ten year close 
season, remove the dove from the list of game birds, and give it a permanent close 
season. 

It should remove the crane and the swan from the list of game birds. 

In twenty-five short years we have seen in Colorado a waste of wild 
life and the destruction of a living inheritance that has few parallels in 
history. Possibly the people of Colorado are satisfied with the residuum ; 
but some outsiders regard all Rock}^ Mountain shambles with a feeling 
of horror. 

A brief quarter-century ago, Colorado was a zoological park of grand 
scenery and big game. The scenery remains, but of the great wild herds, 
only samples are left, and of some species not even that. 

The last bison of Colorado were exterminated in Lost Park b}' 
scoundrels calling themselves "taxidermists," in 1897. Of the 200,000 
mule deer that inhabited Routt County and other portions of Colorado, 
not enough now remain to make deer hunting interesting. A perpetual 
close season was put on mountain sheep just in time to save a dozen small 
flocks as seed stock. Those flocks have been permitted to live, and they 
have bred until now there are perhaps 3,500 sheep in the state. Of elk, 
only a remnant is left, now protected for fifteen years. 

The grizzly bear is so thoroughly gone that one is seen only by a 
rare accident; but black bears and pumas are sufficiently numerous to 
afford fair sport, provided the hunter has a fine outfit of dogs, horses and 



STATE ROLL-CALL FOR NEW LAWS 



273 



guides. Of prong-horned an- 
telope, several bands remain, 
but it is reported that they 
are steadily diminishing. 
The herds and herders of 
domestic sheep are blamed 
for the decrease, and I have 
no doubt they deserve it. 
The sheep and their cham- 
pions are the implacable 
enemies of all wild game, and 
before them the game van- 
ishes, everywhere. 

The lawmakers of Color- 
ado have tried hard to pro- 
vide adequate statutes for 
the protection of the wild 
life of the state. In fact, I 
think that no state has put 
forth greater or more elab- 
orate efforts in that direc- 
tion. For example, in 1899, 
under the leadership of Judge 
D. C. Beaman of Denver, 
Colorado initiated the ' ' more 
game movement," by enact- 
ing a very elaborate law pro- 
viding for the establishment 
of private game preserves 
and farms for the breeding 
of game under state license, 
and the tagging and sale of 
preserve-bred game under 
state supervision. 

The history of game de- 
struction in Colorado is a 

repetition of the old, old story, — plenty of laws, but a hundred times too 
many hunters, killing the game both according to law and contrary to it, 
and doing it five times as fast as the game could breed. That combina- 
tion can safely be warranted to wipe out the wild life of any country in 
the world, and accomplish it right swiftly. 

As a big-game country, Colorado is distinctly out of the running. Her 
people are too lawless, and her frontiersmen are, in the main, far too 
selfish to look upon plenteous game without going after it. Some of these 
days, a new call of the wild will arise in Colorado, demanding an open 
season on mountain sheep. Those who demand it will say, " What harm 
will it do to kill a few surplus bucks ? It will impro\'e the breed, and make 
the herds increase faster!" 




BAND-TAILED PIGEON 

Often Mistaken for the Passenger Pigeon. The rapid Slaughter 

of this Species has Alarmed the Ornithologists of California, 

who now fear its Extinction 



274 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

By all means, have an "open season" on the Colorado big-horn and 
the British Columbia elk. It will "do them good." The excitement of 
ram slaughter will be good for the females, will it not ? Of course, they 
will breed faster after that, — with all the big rams dead. Any "surplus " 
wild life is a public nuisance, and should promptly be shot to pieces. 

In Colorado there is some desire that Estes Park should be acquired 
as a national park, and maintained by the government; but the strong 
reasons for this have not yet appeared. As yet we have not heard any 
reason why the State of Colorado should not herself take it and make of 
it a state park and game preserve. If done, it could be offered as a partial 
atonement for her wastefulness in throwing away her inheritance of 
grand game. 

Colorado has work to do in the preservation of her remnant of bird 
life. In several respects she is behind the times. The present is no time 
to hesitate, or to ask the gunners what they wish to have done about new 
laws for the saving of the remnant of game. The dictates of common 
sense are plain, and inexorable. Let the lawmakers do their whole duty 
by the remnant of wild life, whether the game killers like it or not. 

The Curse oj Domestic Sheep Upon Game and Cattle. — Much has 
been said in print and out of print regarding the extent to which domestic 
sheep have destroyed the cattle ranges and incidentally many game 
ranges of the West; but the half hath not been told. The American 
people as a whole do not realize that the domestic sheep has driven the 
domestic steer from the free grass of the wild West, with the same speed 
and thoroughness with which the buffalo -hunters of the 70's and 80's 
swept away the bison. I have seen hundreds of thousands of acres of 
what once were beautiful and fertile cattle-grazing lands in Montana, 
that has been left by grazing sheep herds looking precisely as if the 
ground had been shaven with razors and then sandpapered. The sheep 
have driven out the cattle, and the price of beef has gone up accord- 
ingly. Neither cattle, horses nor wild game can find food on ground 
that has been grazed over by sheep. 

The following is the testimony of a reliable eye witness, Mr. Dillon 
Wallace, and the full text appears in his book, ''Saddle and Camp in 
the Rockies," (page 169): — 

Domestic sheep and sheep herders are the greatest enemies of the antelope, as 
well as of other game animals and birds- in the regions where herders take their flocks. 
The ranges over which domestic sheep pasture are denuded of forage and stripped of 
all growth, and antelope will not remain upon a range where sheep have been. 

Thus the sheep, sweeping clean all before them and leaving the ranges over which 
they pass unproductive, for several succeeding seasons, of pasturage for either wild 
or domestic animals, together with the destructive shepherds, are the worst enemies 
at present of Utah's wild game, particularly of antelope, sage hens, and grouse. 

In Iron county, which has already become an extensive sheep region, settlers teU 
us that before the advent of sheep, grass grew so luxuriously that a yearling calf lying 
in it could not be seen. Not only has the grass here been eaten, but the roots tramped 
out and killed by the hoofs of thousands upon thousands of sheep, and now wide areas, 
where not long since grass was so plentiful, are as bare and desolate as sand-piles. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

NEW LAWS NEEDED IN THE STATES 

(Continued) 

Connecticut: 

The sale of all native wild game, regardless of its source, should be prohibited at 
all times. Enact at once a five-year close season law on the remnant of ruffed grouse, 
quail, woodcock, snipe, and all shore birds. 

Even in the home of the newest and deadliest "autoloading" shotgun, those guns 
and pump guns should be prohibited in hunting. 

The enormous bag limits of 35 rail and 50 each per day of plover, snipe and shore 
birds is a crime! They should be replaced by a ten-year close season law for all of 
those species. 

The terms of the game commissioners should be not less than four years. 

Like so many other states, Connecticut has recklessly wasted her 
wild-life inheritance. During the fifteen years preceding the year 1898, 
the bird life of that state had decreased 75 per cent. On March 6, 1912, 
Senator Geo. P. McLean, of Connecticut stated at the hearing held by 
his Committee on Forest Reservations and the Protection of Game this 
fact: "We have more cover than there was thirty or forty years ago, 
more brush probably, but there is not one partridge [ruffed grouse] to- 
day where there were twenty ten years ago ! ' ' 

First of all, Connecticut needs a ten-year close season law to save her 
remnant of shore birds before it is completely annihilated. Then she 
needs a Bayne law, and needs it badly. Under such a law, and the tagging 
system that it provides, the state game wardens would have so strong a 
grip on the situation that the present unlawful sale of game would be 
completely stopped. Half-way measures in preventing the sale of game 
will not answer. Already Connecticut has wasted thousands of dollars 
in fruitless efforts to restock her desolated woodlands and farms with 
quail, and to introduce the Hungarian partridge; but even yet she unll 
not protect her own native species! 

Men of Connecticut, save the last remnants of your native game birds 
before they are all utterly exterminated within your borders! Don't 
ask the killers of game what they will agree to, but make the laws what 
you know they should be ! If you want a gameless state, let the destruction 
go on as it now is going, with i6,ooo licensed gunners in the field each year, 
and you will surely have it, right soon. 

Delaware: 

vStop all spring shooting, at once ; stop killing shore birds for ten years, and protect 
swans indefinitely. 



276 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Enact bag-limit laws, in very small figures. 

Stop the sale of all native wild game, regardless of its use, by enacting a Bayne law. 
Enact a resident license law, and provide for a force of paid game wardens. 
Stop the use of machine shot-guns in killing your birds. 

The state of Delaware is nearly twenty years behind the times. Can 
it be possible that her Governor and her people are really satisfied with 
that position? We think not. I dare say they are afflicted with apathy, 
and game-hogs. The latter can easily back up General Apathy to an 
extent that spells "no game laws." In one act, and at one bold stroke, 
Delaware can step out of her position at the rear of the procession of 
states, and take a place in the front rank. Will she do it ? We Lope so, 
for her present status is unworthy of any right-minded, red-blooded state 
this side of the Philippines. 

District of Columbia: 

The sale of all native wild game, regardless of its source, should be stopped im- 
mediately, by the enactment of a complete Bayne law. 

If game-shooting within the District is continued, on the marshes of the Eastern 
Branch and on the Potomac River, common decency demands the enactment of bag- 
limit laws and long close-season laws of the most modern pattern. 

Just why it is that gross abuses against wild life have so long been 
tolerated in the territorial center of the American nation, remains to be 
ascertained. But, whatever the reason the situation is absurd and 
intolerable, and Congress should terminate it immediately. As late as 
1897, and I think for two or three years thereafter, thousands of robins 
were sold every year in the public markets of Washington as food ! As a 
spectacle for gods and men, behold to-day the sale of quail, ruffed grouse, 
wild turkeys and other American game, half way between the Capitol 
and the White House! Look at Center Market as a national "fence" 
for the sale of gaine stolen by market gunners from Maryland, Virginia, 
the Carolinas and Pennsylvania. 

It is time for Congress to bring the District of Columbia sharply 
into line ; for Washington must be made to toe the mark beside New York. 
The reputation of the national capital demands it, whether the gods 
of the cafes will consent or not. 

Florida: 

Shooting shore birds and waterfowl in late winter and spring should be stopped. 

The sale of all native wild game should be prohibited. 

A State Game Commissioner whose term of office should be not less than four years, 
and a force of salaried game wardens, should be appointed. 

A general resident license should be required for hunting. 

The killing of does and fawns should be stopped, and no deer should be killed save 
bucks with horns at least three inches long. 

The bag limit of five deer per year should be two deer; of twenty quail, and two 
turkeys per day should be ten quail and one turkey. 

The open season on all game birds should end on February 1, for domestic reasons. 

Protection should be accorded doves, and robins should be removed from the game 
list. 



NEW LAWS NEEDED IN THE STATES 277 

In the destruction of wild life, I think the backwoods population of 
Florida is the most lawless and defiant that can be found anywhere in 
the United States. The "plume-hunters" have ])ractically exterminated 
the plume-bearing egrets, wholly annihilated the roseate spoonbill, the 
flamingo, and also the Carolina parrakect. On July 8, 1905, one of them 
killed an Audubon Association Warden, Guy M. Bradley, whose business 
it was to enforce the state laws protecting the egret rookeries. The 
people really to blame for the shooting of Guy Bradley, and the exter- 
mination of the egrets by lawless and dangerous men, are the vain and 
merciless women who wear the "white badges of cruelty " as long as they 
can be purchased ! They have much to answer for ! 

Originall3^ Florida was alive with bird life. For number of species, 
abundance of individuals, and general dispersal throughout the whole 
state, I think no other state in America except possibly California ever 
possessed a bird fauna quite comparable with it. Once its bird life was 
one of the wonders of America. But the gunners began early to shoot, 
and shoot, and shoot. During the fifteen years preceding 1898, the general 
bird life of Florida decreased in volume 77 per cent. In 1900 it was at a 
very low point, and it has steadily continued to decrease. The rapidly- 
growing settlement and cultivation of the state has of course had much 
to do with the disappearance of wild life generally, and the draining and 
exploitation of the Everglades will about finish the birds of southern 
Florida. 

The brown pelicans' breeding-place on Pelican Island, in Indian River, 
has been taken in hand by the national government as a bird refuge, 
and its marvelous spectacle of pelican life is now protected. Nine other 
islands on the coast of Florida have been taken as national bird refuges, 
and will render posterity good service. 

The great private game and bird preserve of Dr. Ray V. Pierce, at 
Apalachicola, known as St. Vincent Island, containing twenty square 
miles of wonderful woods and waters, is performing an important func- 
tion for the state and the nation. 

The Forida bag limit on quail is entirely too liberal. I know one man 
who never once exceeded the limit of twenty birds per day, but in the 
season of 1908-9 he killed 86 j quail! Can the quail of an}' state long 
endure such drains as that? 

From a zoological point of view, Florida is in bad shape. A great 
many of her people who shoot are desperately lawless and uncontrollable, 
and the state is not financially able to support a force of wardens suffi- 
ciently strong to enforce the laws, even as they are. It looks as if the 
slaughter would go on tmtil nothing of bird life remains. At present I 
can see no hope whatever for saving even a good remnant of the wild life 
of the state. 

The present status of wild-life protective laws in Florida was made the 
subject of an article in Forest and Stream of August 10, 1912, by John 
H. Wallace, Jr., Game Commissioner of the State of Alabama, in an 
article entitled "The Florida Situation." In view of his record, no one 



278 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

will question either the value or the honest sincerity of Mr. Wallace's 
opinions. The following paragraphs are from that article: 

The enactment of a model and modern game law for the State of Florida is abso- 
lutely imperative in order to save many of the most valuable species of birds and game 
of that State from certain depletion and threatened extinction. The question of the 
protection of the birds and game in Florida is not a local one, but is national in its scope. 
Birds know no state lines, and while practically all the States lying to the north of Florida 
protect migratory birds and waterfowl, yet these are recklessly slaughtered in that 
state to such an extent as to be appalling to all sportsmen and bird lovers. 

So alarming has become the decrease of the birds and game of Florida that unless 
a halt is called on the campaign of reckless annihilation that has been ceaselessly waged 
in that state, the sport and recreation enjoyed by primeval nimrods will linger only in 
history and tradition. 

It is the sincerest hope of all lovers of wild life of the American continent that a 
strong and invincible sentiment, relative to the imperative necessity of real conservation 
legislation, be crystallized in the minds of the members elect of the Florida Legislature, 
to the end that the next Legislature will spread upon the statute books of the State of 
Florida a model and modern law for the preservation and protection of the birds and 
game of that State, which when put into practical operation will elicit the thanks of 
all good citizens, and likewise the gratitude of future generations. 

Georgia: 

Prohibit late winter and spring shooting, and provide rational seasons for wild fowl. 
Reduce the limit on deer to two bucks a season, with horns not less than three inches 
long. 

Protect the meadow lark and stop forever the killing of doves and wood-ducks. 
Prohibit the use of automatic and pump shot-guns in hunting. 
Extend the term of the game commissioner to four years. 

We are glad to report that Georgia has already begun to take up the 
white man's burden. The protection of wild Hfe is now a gentleman's 
proposition, and in it every real man with red blood in his veins has a duty 
to perform. The state of Georgia has recently awakened, and under the 
comprehensive law of 1911 has resolutely undertaken to do her whole 
duty in this matter. 

Idaho: 

The imperative duties of Idaho are as follows : 

Stop all hunting of mountain sheep, mountain goat and elk. 

Give the sage grouse and sharp-tail ten-year close seasons, at once, to forestall' 
their extermination. 

Stop the killing of doves as "game." 

Stop the kiUing of female deer, and of bucks with horns less than three inches long. 

Enact the model law to protect non-game birds. 

Prohibit the use of machine shot-guns in hunting. 

Extend the State Warden's term to four years. 

Like Montana, Wyoming and Colorado, the state of Idaho has wasted 
her stock of game, and it is to be feared that several species are now about 
to disappear from that state. I am told that the sage grouse is almost 
"gone"; and I think that the antelope, caribou, and mountain st.eep 
are in the same condition of scarcity. 



NEW LAWS NEEDED IN THE STATES 279 

If the people of Idaho wish to save their wild fauna, they must be up 
and doing. The time to temporize, theorize, be conservative and easy- 
going has gone by. It is that fatal policy that causes men to slumber 
until it is too late to act; and we will watch with keen interest to see 
whether the real men of Idaho are big enough to do their whole duty in 
time to benefit their state. 

In 1910, Dr. T. S. Palmer credited Idaho with the possession of about 
five hundred moose and two hundred antelope. 

There is one feature of the Idaho game law that may well stand un- 
changed. The open season on "ibex," of which one per year may be 
killed, may as well be continued. One myth per year is not an extravagant 
bag for any intelligent hunter; and it seems that the "ibex " will not down. 
Being officially recognized by Idaho, its place in our fauna now seems 
assured. 

Illinois: 

Enact a Bayne law, and stop tlie sale of all native wild game, regardless of source, 
and regardless of the gay revelers of Chicago. 

In Illinois the bag limits on birds are nearly all at least oO per cent too high. They 
should be as follows: No squirrels, doves or shore birds; six quail, five woodcock, 
ten coots, ten rail, ten ducks, three geese and three brant, with a total limit of ten 
waterfowl per day. 

Doves should be removed from the game list. 

All tree squirrels and chipmunks should be perpetually protected, as companions 
to man, unfit for food. 

The sale of aigrettes should be stopped, and Chicago placed in the same class as 
Boston, New York, New Orleans and San Francisco. 

The use of all machine shotguns in hunting should be prohibited. 

The chief plague-spots for the grinding up of American game are 
Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans and San Francisco. 
St. Louis cleared her record in 1909. New York thoroughly cleaned her 
Augean stable in 191 1, and Massachusetts won her Bayne law by a desper- 
ate battle in 1912. In 1913, Pennsylvania probably will enact a Bayne 
law. 

Fancy a city in the center of the United States sending to Norway for 
1,500 ptarmigan, to eat, as Chicago did in 1911; and that was only one 
order. 

For forty years the marshes, prairies, farms and streams of the whole 
■^^ — Upper Mississippi Valley have been combed year after year by the guns 
of the market shooters. Often the migratory game was located by tele- 
graphic reports. Game birds were slain by the wagon-load, boat-load, 
barrel, and car-load, "for the Chicago market." And the fool farmers of 
the Middle West stoHdly plowed their fields and fed their hogs, and per- 
mitted the slaughter to go on. To-day the sons of those farmers go to 
the museums and zoological parks of the cities to see specimens of pin- 
nated grouse, crane, woodcock, ducks and other species that the market 
shooters have "wiped out"; and their fathers wax eloquent in telling 
of the flocks of pigeons that "darkened the sky," and the big droves of 



280 OVR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

prairie chickens that used to rise out of the corn-fields "with a roar Hke a 
coming storm." 

To-day, Chicago stands half-way reformed. Her markets are open 
to only one-half the game killable in Illinois, but they are wide open to all 
"legally killed game imported from other states, from Oct. 1 to Feb. 1." 
Through that hole in her game laws any game-dealer can drive a moving- 
van! Of course, any game offered in Chicago has been "legally killed in 
some other state!" Who can prove otherwise? 

In addition to the imported game illegally killed in other states, the 
starving population of Chicago may also buy for cash, and consume with 
their champagne in November and December, all the Illinois doves that 
can be combed out by the market-gunners. 

After the awful Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago, in 1903, the game 
dealers reported a heavy falling off in the consumption of game! The 
tragedy caused the temporary closing of the theaters, and the falling ofiE 
in after-theater suppers may be said to have taken away the appetites 
of thousands of erstwhile consumers of game. Incidentally it showed who 
consumes purchased game. 

The people of Illinois should now enact a full-fledged Bayne law, 
without changing a single word, and bring Chicago up to the level of 
New York, St. Louis and Boston. 

The present bag limits on Illinois game birds are fatally high. As 
they stand, with 190,000 licensed gunners in the field each year, what 
else do they mean than extermination? The men of Illinois have just 
two alternatives between which to choose : drastic and immediate pre- 
servation, or a gameless state. Which shall it be? 

Indiana: 

Indiana should hasten to stop spring shooting. 

She should enact a law, prohibiting the sale for millinery purposes of the plumage 
of all wild birds save ducks killed in their open season. 

A Bayne law, absolutely prohibiting the sale of all native wild game, should be 
enacted at once. 

The killing of squirrels should be prohibited; because they are not white men's game. 

Ruffed grouse and quail should have five year close seasons. 

The use of pump and autoloading guns in hunting should be prohibited. 

In Indiana the white-tailed deer is extinct. This means very close 
hunting, and a bad outlook for all other game larger than the sparrow. 
On October 2, 1912, eleven heads of greater bird of paradise, with plumes 
attached, were offered for sale within one hundred feet of the head- 
quarters of the Fourth National Conservation Congress. The prices 
ranged from $35 to $47.50; and while we looked, two ladies came up, one 
of whom pointed to a bird-of -paradise corpse and said: "There! I want 
one o' them, an' I'm a-goin' to have it, too!" 

Iowa: 

Spring shooting should be stopped, at once and forever. 



NFAV LAWS NEEDED IN THE STATES 281 

The killing of all tree squirrels and chipmunks should cease. 

All shore birds that visit Iowa deserve a five-year close season. 

Especially is the shooting of plover, sandpiper, marsh and beach birds, rail, duck, 
geese and brant from September 1, to April 15, an outrage. 

Iowa should prohibit the use of the machine guns, and it is to be hojied that she 
will awaken sufficiently to do so. 

It is said that the Indian word " Iowa " means "the drowsy, or sleepy 
ones." Politically, and educationally, Iowa is all right, but in the pro- 
tection of wild life she is ten years behind the times, in almost everything 
save the prohibition of the sale of game. Iowa knows better than to pursue 
the course that she does! She boasts about her corn and hogs, but she is 
deaf to the appeals of the states surrounding her on the subject of spring 
shooting. For years Minnesota has set her a good example ; but nothing 
moves her to step up where she belongs in the phalanx of intelligent game- 
protecting states. 

The foregoing may sound harsh, but in view of what other states have 
endured from Iowa's stubbornness regarding migratory game, the time 
for silent treatment of her case has gone by. She is to-day in the same 
class as North Carolina, South Carolina and Maryland,- — at the tail end 
of the procession of states. She cares everything for corn and hogs, but 
little for wild life. 

Kansas: 

Spring shooting should be stopped, at once; with apologies for not having done so 
long ago. 

The continued shooting of prairie chickens when the species is near extermination 
is outrageous, and should be prohibited for ten years. 

Doves should be removed permanently from the game list, partly as a measure of 
self respect. 

Kansas should treat herself to a force of salaried game wardens rendering real service. 

vSlie should bar out the machine guns as unfit for use in a well-regulated State. 

Kansas has calmly witnessed the extermination of her bison, elk, 
deer, antelope, wild turkeys, sage grouse, whooping cranes, and the be- 
ginning of the end of her pinnated grouse, without a pang. What is wild 
game in comparison with fat hogs, and seventy-bushels-to-the-acre ! 

Draw a line around the hog-and-corn area of the United States, and 
within it you will find more spring shooting, more sale of game and more 
extermination of species than in any other area in the United States. I 
refer to Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, 
Kentucky and Tennessee. In not one of these states except Missouri 
is there any big game hunting, and in the majority of them spring shoot- 
ing is la\vful ! 

In the Island of Mauritius, it was swine that exterminated the dodo. 
In the United States, hogs and game extermination still go hand in hand. 
Since the days of the dodo, however, a new species of swine has been 
developed. It is now widely known as the "game-hog," and it has been 
officially recognized by both bench and bar. 



282 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Kentucky : 

Nearly everything that a state should maintain in the line of wild life 
protection Kentucky lacks! It is easier to tell what she has than to recite 
what she should have. Kentucky permits spring shooting; she has no 
bag limits, and she has long open seasons on everything save introduced 
pheasants; She protects from sale only quail, grouse and wild turkey 
killed within her own borders. This means that her markets are practically 
wide open. 

Until recently the people of Kentucky have been very indifferent to 
the value of her wild-life ; but with the new law enacted this year providing 
for a game commission and a game protection fund, surely every member 
of the Army of the Defense will wish God-speed to her efforts in game 
conservation, and stand ready to lend a helping hand whenever help can 
be utilized. 

Kentucky should at one grand coup stop spring shooting and all sale 
of wild game, accord long close seasons to all species that are verging on 
extinction, protect doves, establish moderate bag limits and stop the use of 
machine guns. If she takes up these measures at the rate of only one 
at each legislative session, by the time her laws are perfect all her game 
will be gone! 

Louisiana: 

On more counts than one, Louisiana is in the list of Great Delin- 
quents ; for behold the things that she needs to do : 

Protect deer for five years. 

Instantly take the robin, red-winged black-bird, dove, grosbeak, wood-duck and 
gull oflf the list of birds that may be killed as "game." 

Stop all late winter and spring shooting. 

Stop the sale of all native game, and the possession and transportation of game sold 
or intended for sale. In short. 

Enact a Bayne law. 

Re-establish a game warden system. 

In legally permitting the slaughter of the robin, red-winged black- 
bird, dove, grosbeak, wood -duck and gull the state of Louisiana is very 
culpable. 

For good reasons, forty states of the American Union strictly prohibit 
the killing of song and insectivorous birds. The duty of every state to 
protect those birds is not a debatable proposition. I put this question 
to the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and 
other states where the robin is treated as a game bird : Is it fair of you 
to kill and eat robins when that species is carefully protected by forty 
other states of our country for grave economic reasons? What would 
you say of the people of the North if they slaughtered your mocking- 
bird to eat! 

Remember this proportion: 

The Robin : The North : : The Mockingbird : The South. 



CHAPTER XXX 

NEW LAWS NEEDED IN THE STATES 

(Continued) 
Maine: 

There are reasons for the beHef that Maine is conserving her large 
game better than any other state or province in North America. One 
glance over her laws is sufficient to convince anyone that instead of study- 
ing the clamor of her shooting population, Maine has actually been 
studying the needs of her game, and providing for those needs. If all 
■other states were doing equally well, the task of writing a book of ad- 
monition would have been unnecessary. The proof of Maine's alertness 
is to be found in the number of her extra short, or entirely closed, seasons 
on game. For example: 

Cow and calf moose are permanently protected. 

Only bull moose, with at least two 3-inch prongs on its horns, may be killed. 

Caribou have had a close season since 1899. 

On gray and black squirrels, doves and quail, there is no open season. 

The open season for deer varies from ten weeks to four weeks, and in parts of three 
counties there is no open season at all. 

Silencers are prohibited, and firearms in forests may be prohibited by the Governor 
during droughts. 

Nearly all wild-fowl shooting ends January 1, but in two places, on December 1. 

People who have not learned the facts habitually think of Maine as a 
vast killing-ground for deer; and it is well for it to be known that the 
hunting-grounds have been carefully designated, according to the 
abundance or scarcity of game. 

Maine has wisely chosen to regard her hunting-grounds and her deer 
as a valuable asset, and she manages them accordingly. To be a guide 
in that state is to be a good citizen, and a protector of game from illegal 
slaughter. No non-resident may hunt without a licensed guide. The 
licenses for the thousands of deer killed in Maine each year, and the 
expenses of the visiting sportsmen who hunt them, annually bring into 
the state and leave there a huge sum of money, variously estimated at 
from $2,000,000 to $3,000,000. One can only guess at the amount from 
the number of non-resident licenses i.ssued; but certainly the total can 
not be less than $1,000,000. 

Although Mr. L. T. Carleton is no longer chairman of the Commission 
of Inland Fisheries and Game, the splendid services that he rendered the 
state of Maine during his thirteen years of service, especially in the 
creation of a good code of game laws, constitute an imperishable monu- 
ment to his name and fame. 



284 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

There is very little that Maine needs in the line of new legislation, or 
better protection to her game. With the enactment of a resident license 
law and a five-year close season for woodcock, plover, snipe and sand- 
pipers, I think her laws for the protection of wild life would be sufficiently 
perfect for all practical purposes. The Pine-Tree State is to be con- 
gratulated upon its wise and efficient handling of the wild-life situation. 

Maryland: 

How has it come to pass that Maryland lacks more good wild-life laws 
than any other state in the Union except North Carolina ? Of the really 
fundamental protective laws, embracing the list that to every self- 
respecting state seems indispensable, Maryland has almost none save 
certain bag-limit laws! Otherwise, the state is wide open! It is indeed 
high time that she should abandon her present attitude of hostility to 
wild life, and become a good neighbor. She should do what is fair and 
right about the protection of the migratory game and bird life that an- 
nually passes twice through her territory! 

At the last session of the Maryland legislature, the law preventing 
the use of power boats in wild-fowl shooting was repealed. That was a 
step ten years backward ; and Maryland should be ashamed of it I 

The list of things that Maryland must do in order to clear her record 
is a long one. Here it is: 

Local regulations should be replaced by a uniform state law. 

The sale of all native wild game should be stopped. 

Spring and late winter shooting of game should be stopped. 

All non-game birds not already included under the statutes should be protected. 

The exportation of all game should be prohibited, unless accompanied by the man 
who shot it, bearing his license, and the law should be state- wide instead of depending 
upon a separate enactment for each county. 

There should be a hunter's license law for all who hunt. 

The use of machine shotguns in hunting should be stopped, at once. 

Stop the use of power boats in wild-fowl shooting. 

Massachusetts : 

In 1912 the state of Massachusetts moved up into the foremost rank 
of states, where for one year New York had stood alone. She passed a 
counterpart of the New York law, absolutely prohibiting the sale of all 
wild American game in Massachusetts, but providing for the sale of game 
that has been reared in preserves and tagged by state officers. This 
victory was achieved only after three months of hard fighting. The 
coalition of sportsmen, zoologists and friends of wild life in general 
proved irresistible, just as a similar union of forces accomplished the 
Bayne law in New York in 1911. The victory is highly instructive, as 
great victories usually are. It proves once more that whenever the 
American people can be aroused from their normal apathy regarding 
wild life, any good conservation legislation can be enacted! The prime 
necessities to success are good measures, good management, a reasonable 



NEW LAWS NEEDED IN THE STATES 285 

campaign fund, and tireless energy and persistence. Massachusetts is 
to be roundly congratulated on having so thoroughly cleaned up her 
sale-of-game situation. 

Incidentally, five bills for the repeal of the IVIassachusetts law against 
spring shooting were introduced, and each one went down to the defeat 
that it deserved. The repeal of a spring-shooting law, anywhere, is a step 
backward ten years! 

Massachusetts needs a bag-limit law more in keeping with her small 
remnant of wild life; and that she will have ere long. Very soon, also, 
her sportsmen will raise the standard of ethics in shotgun shooting, by 
barring out the automatic and pump shotguns so much beloved by the 
market shooters. As matters stand at this date (1912) the Old Bay State 
needs the following new laws: 

Low bag limits on all game. 

Five-year close seasons on all shore birds, snipe and woodcock. 

Expulsion of the automatic and pump shotguns, in hunting. 

Michigan: 

On the whole, the game laws of Michigan are in excellent shape, and 
leave little to be desired in the line of betterment except to be simplified. 
All the game protected by the laws of the state is debarred from sale; 
squirrels, pinnated grouse, doves and wild turkeys enjoy long close 
seasons ; the bag limits on deer and game birds are reasonably low ; spring 
shooting still is possible on nine species of ducks; and this should be 
stopped without delay. 

Only three or four suggestions are in order : 

All spring shooting should be prohibited. 

All shore birds should have a five-year close season. 

The use of the machine shotguns in hunting should be stopped. 

The laws should permit the sale, under tag, of all species of game that can success- 
fully be reared in preserves on a commerciTl basis. 

Two or three state game preserves, for deer, each at least four miles square, sliould 
be established without delay. 

Minnesota: 

This state sliould at once enact a bag-limit law that will do some good, instead of 
the statutory farce now on the books. Make it fifteen birds per day of waterfowl, all 
species combined, and no grouse or quail. 

There should be five-year close seasons enacted for (]uail, grouse, plover, woodcock, 
snipe, and all other shore birds. 

A law sliould be enacted pro]iil:)iting the use of firearms by unnaturalized aliens, 
and a S2() license for all naturalized aliens. 

Provision should be made for a large state game refuge in southern Minnesota. 

The state should prohibit the use of machine guns in hunting. 

To-day, direct and reliable advices show that the game situation 
in Minnesota is far from encouraging. Several species are threatened 



286 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

with extinction at an early date. In northern Minnesota it is 
reported that much game is surreptitiously trapped and slaughtered. The 
bob white is reported as threatened with total extinction at an early date ; 
but I think the prairie chicken will be the first bird species to go. Moose 
will soon be extinct everj^where in Minnesota except in the game pre- 
serves. Apparently there is now about one duck in Minnesota for every 
ten ducks that were there only ten years ago. 

Now, what is Minnesota going to do about all this? Is she willing 
through Apathy to become a gameless state ? Her people need to arouse 
themselves now, and pass several strong laws. Her bag limit of forty-five 
birds per day of quail, grouse, woodcock and plover, and fifty per day of 
the waterbirds, is a joke, and nothing more; but it is no laughing matter. 
It spells extermination. 

Mississippi: 

The legalized slaughter of robins, cedar birds, grosbeaks and doves should cease 
immediately, on the basis of economy of resources and a square deal to all the states 
lying northward of Mississippi. 

The shooting of all water-fowl should cease on January 1 . 

A reasonable limit should be established on deer. 

A hunting license law should be passed at once, fixing the fee at $1 and devoting 
the revenue to the pay of a corps of non-political game wardens, selected on a basis of 
ability and fitness. 

The administration of the game laws should be placed in charge of a salaried game 
commissioner. 

It is seriously to the discredit of Mississippi that her laws actually 
classify robins, cedar-birds, grosbeaks and doves as "game," and make 
them killable as such from Sept. i to March i! I should think that if no 
economic consideration carried weight in Mississippi, state pride alone 
would be sufficient to promote a correction of the evil. If we of the 
North were to slaughter mockingbirds for food, when they come North 
to visit us, the men of the South would call us greedy barbarians; and 
they would be quite right. 

Missouri: 

The Missouri bag limits that permit the killing or possession of fifty birds per day 
are absurd, and fatally liberal. The utmost should be twenty-five; and even that is 
too high. 

Doves should be taken off the list of game birds, and protected throughout the year; 
and so should all tree squirrels. 

Spring shooting of shore birds and waterfowl should be prohibited without delay. 

A law against automatic and pump guns should be enacted at the next legislative 
session, as a public lesson on the raising of the standard of ethics in shooting. 

The state of Missouri is really strong in her position as a game- 
protecting state. She perpetually protects such vanishing species as the 
ruffed grouse, prairie chicken (pinnated grouse), woodcock, and all her 
shore birds save snipe and plover. She prohibits the sale of native game 
and the killing of female deer ; but she wisely permits the sale of preserve- 



NEW LAWS NEEDED IN THE STATES 287 

bred elk and deer under the tags of the State Game Commission. For 
nearly all the wild game that is accessible, her markets are tightly closed. 
We heartily congratulate Missouri on her advanced position on the 
sale of game, and we hope that the people of Iowa will even yet profit by 
her good example. 

Montana; 

Like Colorado and "Wyoming, Montana is wasting a valuable heritage 
of wild game while she struggles to maintain the theory that she still is 
in the list of states that furnish big-game hunting. It is a fact that ten 
years ago most sportsmen began to regard Montana as a has-been for 
big game, and began to seek better hunting-grounds elsewhere. British 
Columbia, Alberta and Alaska have done much for the game of Montana 
by drawing sportsmen away from it. Mr. Henry Avare, the State Game 
Warden, is optimistic regarding even the big game, and believes that 
it is holding its own. This is partially true of white-tailed deer, or it was 
up to the time of great slaughter. It is said that in 1911, 11,000 deer 
were killed in Montana, all in the western part of the state, seventy per 
cent of which were white-tails. The deep snows and extreme cold of a 
long and unusually severe winter drove the hungry deer down out of the 
mountains into the settlements, where the ranchmen jo^'ously slaughtered 
them. The destruction around Kalispell was described by Harry P. 
Stanford as "sickening." 

Mr. Avare estimates the prong-horned antelope in Montana at three 
thousand head, of which about six hundred are under the quasi -protection 
of four ranches. 

The antelope need three or four small ranges, such as the Snow Creek Antelope 
Range, where the bad lands are too rough for ranchmen, but quite right for antelopes 
and other big game. 

All the grouse and ptarmigan of Montana need a five-year close season. The 
splendid sage grouse is now extinct in many parts of its previous range. Fifty-eight 
thousand licensed gunners are too many for them ! 

The few mountain sheep and mountain goats that survive should have a five-year 
close season, at once. 

The killing of female hoofed animals should be prohibited by law. 

Montana has not yet adopted the model law for the protection of non-game birds. 
Only seven states have failed in that respect. 

The use of automatic and pump shotguns, and silencers, should immediately be 
prohibited. 

Montana's bag-limits are not wholly bad; but the grizzly bear has 
almost been exterminated, save in the Yellowstone Park. vSome of 
these days, if things go on as they are now going, the people of Montana 
will be rudely awakened to the fact that they have 50,000 licensed hunters 
but no longer any killable game! And then we will hear enthusiastic 
talk about "restocking." 

Nebraska: 

No other state has bestowed close seasons upon as many extinct species 



288 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

of game as Nebraska. Behold how she has resolutely locked the doors of 
her empty cage after all these species have flown: Elk, antelope, wild 
turkey, passenger pigeon, whooping crane, sage grouse, ptarmigan and 
curlew. In a short time the pinnated grouse can be added to the list 
of has-beens. 

There is little to say regarding the future of the game of Nebraska; 
for its "future" is now history. 

Provision should be made for one or more state game preserves. 
Spring shooting of shore birds and waterfowl should be prohibited. 
A larger and more effective warden service should be provided. 
Doves should be removed from the game list. 

Nevada: 

The sage grouse should be given a ten-year close season, for recuperation. 

All non-game birds should have perpetual protection. 

The cranes, now verging on extinction, and the pigeons and doves should at once 
be taken out of the list of game birds, and forever protected. 

All the shore birds need five years of close protection. 

A State Game Warden whose term of office is not less than four years should be 
provided for. 

A corps of salaried game protectors should be chosen for active and aggressive game 
protection. 

Nevada's bag limits are among the best of any state, the only serious flaw being 
" 10 sage grouse" per day: which should be 0! 

Nevada still has a few antelope ; and we beg her to protect them all from 
being hunted or killed! It is my belief that if the antelope is really saved 
anywhere in the United States outside of national parks and preserves, 
it will be in the wild and remote regions of Nevada, where it is to be hoped 
that lumpy-jaw has not yet taken hold of the herds. 

New Hampshire: 

Speaking generally, the New Hampshire laws regulating the killing 
and shipment of game are defective for the reason that on birds, and in 
fact all game save deer, there appear to be no "bag" limits on the 
quantity that may be killed in a day or a season. The following bag 
limits are greatly needed, forthwith: 

Gray Squirrel, none per day, or per year; duck (except wood-duckj, ten per day, 
or thirty per season; ruffed grouse, four per day, twelve per season; hare and rabbit, 
four per day, or twelve per season. 

Five-year close seasons should immediately be enacted for the following species: 
quail, woodcock, jacksnipe and all species of shore or "beach" birds. 

The sale of all native wild game should be prohibited; and game-breeding in pre- 
serves, and the sale of such game under state supervision, should be provided for. 

The use of automatic and pump guns in hunting should be barred, — through state 
pride, if for no other reason. 

New Jersey: 

New Jersey enjoys the distinction of being the second state to break 



NEW LAWS NEEDED IN THE STATES 289 

the strangle-hold of the gun-makers of Hartford and IHon, and cast out 
the odious automatic and pump guns. It was a pitched battle, — that of 
1912, inaugurated by Ernest Napier, President of the State Game and 
Fish Commission and his fellow commissioners. The longer the contest 
continued, the more did the press and the people of New Jersey awaken 
to the seriousness of the situation. Finally, the gun-suppression bill 
passed the two houses of the legislature with a total of only fourteen votes 
against it, and after a full hearing had been granted the attorneys of the 
gunmakers, was promptly signed by Governor Woodrow Wilson. Gov- 
ernor Wilsott could not be convinced that the act ivas "unconstitutional,'" or 
"confiscatory" or "class legislation." 

This contest aroused the whole state to the imperative necessity of 
providing more thorough protection for the remnant of New Jersey game, 
and it was chiefly responsible for the enactment of four other excellent 
new protective laws. 

New Jersey always has been sincere in her desire to protect her wild 
life, and always has gone as far as the killers of game would permit her to go! 
But the People have made one great mistake, — common to nearly every 
state, — of permitting the game-killers to dictate the game laws! Always 
and everywhere, this is a grievous mistake, and fatal to the game. For 
example : In 1866 New Jersey enacted a five-year close-season law on the 
"prairie fowl" (pinnated grouse); but it was too late to save it. Now 
that species is as dead to New Jersey as is the mastodon. The moral is: 
Will the People apply this lesson to the ruffed grouse, quail and the shore 
birds generally before they, too, are too far gone to be brought back? 
If it is done, it must be done against the will of the gunners; for they prefer 
to shoot, — and shoot they will if they can dictate the laws, until the last 
game bird is dead. 

In 1912, New Jersey is spending $30,000 in trying to restock her 
birdless covers with foreign game birds and quail. In brief, here are the 
imperative duties of New Jersey : 

Provide eight-3^ear close seasons for quail, ruffed grouse, woodcock, snipe, all shore 
birds and the wood-duck. 

Prohibit the sale of all native wild game ; but promote the sale of preserve-bred game. 
Prevent the repeal of the automatic gun law, which surelj^ will be attempted, each 
year. 

Prohibit all bird-shooting after January 10, each year, until fall. 
Prohibit the killing of squirrels as "game." 

New Mexico: 

All things considered, the game laws of New Mexico are surprisingly 
up to date, and the state is to be congratulated on its advanced position. 
For example, there arc long close seasons on antelope, elk (now extinct!), 
mountain sheep, bob white quail, pinnated grouse, wild pigeon and 
ptarmigan, — an admirable list, truly. It is clear that New Mexico is 
wide awake to the dangers of the wild-life situation. On two counts, her 
laws are not quite perfect. There is no law prohibiting spring shooting, 



290 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

and there is no "model law" protecting the non-game birds. The sale 
of game will not trouble New Mexico, because the present laws prevent 
the sale of all protected game except plover, curlew and snipe, — all of them 
• species by no means common in the arid regions of the Southwest. 

A law prohibiting spring shooting of shore birds and waterfowl should be passed at 
the next session of the legislature. 

The enactment of the "model law" should be accomplished without delay to put 
New Mexico abreast of the neighboring states of Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas. 

The term of the State Warden should be extended to four years. 

New York: 

In the year of grace, 1912, I think we may justly regard New York 
as the banner state of all America in the protection of game and wild life 
in general. This proud position has been achieved partly through the 
influence of a great conservation Governor, John A. Dix, and the 
State Conservation Commission proposed and created b}^ his efforts. In 
these days of game destruction, when our country from Nome to Key 
West is reeking with the blood of slaughtered wild creatures, it is a 
privilege and a pleasure to be a citizen of a state which has thoroughly 
cleaned house, and done well nigh the utmost that any state can do to 
clear her bad record, and give all her wild creatures a fair chance to 
survive. The people of the Empire State literally can point with pride 
to the list of things accomplished in the discharge of good-citizenship 
toward the remnant of wild life, and toward the future generations of 
New Yorkers. That we of to-day have borne our share of the burden of 
bringing about the conditions of 1912, will be a source of satisfaction, 
especially when the sword and shield hang useless upon the walls of 
Old Age. 

New York began to protect her deer in 1705 and her heath hens in 
1708. In 1912 she stopped the killing of female deer, and of bucks having 
horns less than three inches in length. Spring shooting was stopped in 
1903. A comprehensive law protecting non-game birds was enacted in 
1862. New York's first law against the sale of certain game during close 
seasons was enacted in 1837. 

In 1911 New York enacted, with only one adverse vote, a law pro- 
hibiting the sale of all native wild game throughout the state, no matter 
where killed, and providing liberally for the encouragement of game- 
breeding, and the sale of preserve-bred game. 

In 1912 a new codification of the state game laws went into effect, 
through the initiative of Governor Dix and Conservation Commissioners 
Van Kennen, Moore and Fleming, assisted (as special counsel) by Mar- 
shall McLean, George A. Lawyer and John B. Burnham. This code 
contains many important new provisions, one of the most valuable of 
which is a clause giving the Conservation Commission power, at its dis- 
cretion, to shorten or to close any open season on any species of game in 
any locality wherein that species seems to be threatened with extermina- 
tion. This very valuable principle should be enacted into law in every state ! 



NEW LAWS NEEDED IN THE STATES 291 

In 1910, William Dutcher and T. Gilbert Pearson and the National 
Association of Audubon Societies won, after a struggle lasting five years, 
the passage of the "Shea plumage bill," prohibiting the sale of aigrettes 
or other plumage of wild birds belonging to the same families as the birds 
of New York (Chap. 256). This law should be duplicated in every state. 

Two things remain to be done in the state of New York. 

All the shore birds, quail and gray squirrels of the state should be given five-year 
cIo.se seasons, by the action of the State Conservation Commission. 

For the good name of the state, and the ethical standing of its sportsmen, as an 
example to other states, and the last remaining duty toward our wild life, the odioua 
automatic and pump shotguns should be barred from use in hunting, unless their 
capacity is reduced to two shots without reloading. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

NEW LAWS NEEDED IN THE STATES 

(Concluded) 

North Carolina: 

The game laws of North Carolina form a droll crazy-quilt of local and 
state measures, effective and ineffective. In 1909, a total of 77 local 
game laws were enacted, and only tvv'o of state-wide application. During 
the ten years ending in 1910, a total of 316 game laws were enacted! She 
sedulously endeavors to protect her quail, which do not migrate, but in 
Currituck County she persistently maintains the bloodiest slaughter- 
pen for waterfowl that exists anywhere on the Atlantic Coast. There is 
no bag limit on waterfowl, and unlimited spring shooting. So far as 
waterfowl are concerned, conditions could hardly be worse, except by the 
use of punt guns. Doves, larks and robins are shot and eaten as "game" 
from November 1 to March 1 ! Twenty-one counties have local re- 
strictions on the sale of game, but the state at large has only one, — on 
quail. 

The market gunners of Currituck Sound are a scourge and a pest to 
the wild-fowl life of the Atlantic Coast. For their own money profit, 
they slaughter by wholesale the birds that annually fly through twenty- 
two states. It is quite useless to suggest anything to North Carolina in 
modern game laws. As long as a killable bird remains, she will not stop 
the slaughter. Her standing reply is "It brings a lot of money into 
Currituck County ; and the people want the money . " Even the members 
of the sportsmen's clubs can shoot wild fowl in Currituck County, quite 
without limit; and I am told that the privilege often is abused. Quite 
recently I heard of a member of one of the clubs who shot 164 ducks and 
geese in two days ! 

Apparently any suggestions made to North Carolina would not be 
treated seriously, especially if they would tend really to elevate the sport 
of game shooting, or better protect the game. There is, however, a 
melancholy interest attached to the framing of good game laws, whether 
they ever are likely to be adopted or not. Here is the duty of North 
Carolina : 

Stop the killing of robins, doves and larks for food, absolutely and forever. This 
measure is necessary to agriculture and to the good name of the state. 

Stop the shooting of any game for sale, prohibit the possession of game for sale, and 
the sale of wild native game. 

Establish bag limits on all waterfowl, and on all other game birds and mammals. 



NEW LAWS NEEDED IN THE STATES 293 

Prepare to protect, at an early date, the wild turkey and quail ; for soon they will 
need it. Moreover, enact a law prohibiting the use of automatic and pump guns in 
hunting, covering the entire state. 

Provide a resident-license system and thereby make the game department self- 
sustaining, and render it possible to employ a salaried State Game Commissioner. 

It is quite wrong for the people of North CaroHna to hold grudges 
against northern members of the ducking clubs of Currituck for the 
passage of the Bayne law. They had nothing whatever to do with it , 
and I can say this because I was in a position which enabled me to know. 

North Dakota: 

In 1911, this sovereign state enacted a law prohibiting the use of auto- 
mobiles in hunting wild-fowl; also rifles. North Dakota was the first 
state to recognize officially the fact that the use of automobiles in hunt- 
ing is a serious m.enace to some forms of wild life. Beyond all question, 
the machines do indeed bring an extra number of birds within reach of 
the gun ! They increase the annual slaughter ; and it is right and neces- 
sary to prohibit by law their use in hunting game of any kind. 

In Putman County, New York, I have seen them in action. A load 
of three or four gunners is whirled up to a likely mountain-side for ruffed 
grouse, and presently the banging begins. After an hour or so spent in 
combing out the birds, the hunters jump in, whirl away in a dust-cloud 
to another spot two miles away, and "bang-bang-bang" again. After 
that, a third locality; and so on, covering six or eight times the territory 
that a man in a buggy, or on foot, could possibly shoot over in the same 
time! 

North Dakota has done well, in the passage of that act. On certain 
other matters, she is not so sound. 

For instance : 

The killing of pinnated grouse should be stopped for ten years; and it should be 
done immediately. 

The killing of cranes as "game " should stop, instantly and forever. It is barbarous. 

Fifty dead birds in possession at one time is fully thirty too many. The game 
cannot stand such slaughter ! 

All shore birds (Order Limicolae) should have at least a five-year close season, 
before they are exterminated. 

The use of machine guns in hunting should be stopped, forever. 

It is to the credit of the state that antelope are absolutely protected 
until 1920, and an unlimited close season has been accorded the quail, 
dove and swan. 

Ohio: 

I think that Ohio comes the nearest of all the states to being gameless. 
With but slight exceptions her laws are about as correct as those of most 
other states, but the desire to "kill " is so strong, and the majority of her 
gunners are so thoroughly selfish about their "rights" that the game has 



294 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

ruthlessly been swept away according to law! Ohio is a striking example 
of the deplorable results of legalized slaughter. The spirit of Ohio is like 
that of North Carolina. Her "sportsmen" will not have an automatic 
gun law! Oh, no! "Limit the bag, shorten the season, and the gun 
won't matter!" 

To-day, the visible game supply of Ohio does not amount to any- 
thing ; and when the last game bird of that state falls before the greediest 
shooter, we shall say, "A gameless state is just what you deserve!" 

It is useless to make any suggestions to Ohio. Her shooting Shylocks 
want the last pound of flesh from wild life, and I think they will get it 
very soon. Ohio is in the area of barren states. The seed stock has been 
too thoroughly destroyed to be recuperated. I think that Ohio's last 
noteworthy exploit in lawmaking for the preservation ( !) of her game was 
in 1904, when she put all her shore birds into the list of killable game, 
and bravely prohibited the shooting of doves on the ground! Great is 
Ohio in game conservation! 

Oklahoma: 

For a state so young, the wild-life laws of Oklahoma are in admirable 
shape; but it is reasonably certain that there, as elsewhere, the game is 
being killed much faster than it is breeding. The new commonwealth 
must arouse, and screw up the brakes much tighter. 

Recently, an observing friend told me that on a trip of 250 miles 
westward from Lawton and back again, watching sharply for game all 
the way, he saw only five pinnated grouse ! And this in a good season 
for "prairie chickens." 

Oklahoma must stop all spring shooting. 

The prairie chicken must have a ten-year close season, immediately. 

Next time, her legislature will pass the automatic gun bill that failed last year only 
because the session closed too soon for its consideration. 

Oklahoma is wise in giving long protection to her quail, and "wild 
pigeon, " and such protection should be made equally effective in the case 
of the dove. She is wise in rigidly enforcing her law against the exporta- 
tion of game. 

The Wichita National Bison herd, near Cache, now contains forty 
head of bison, all in good condition. The nucleus herd consisted of 
fifteen head presented by the New York Zoological Society in 1907. 

Oregon: 

The results of the efforts that have been made by Oregon to provide 
special laws for each individual shooter are painful to contemplate. Like 
North Carolina, Oregon has attempted the impossible task of pleasing 
everybody, and at the same time protecting her wild life. The two 
propositions can be blended together about as easily as asphalt and water. 



NEW LAWS NEEDED IN THE STATES 295 

The individual shooter desires laws that will permit him to shoot — when 
he pleases, where he pleases, and what he pleases! If you meet those 
conditions all over a great state, then it is time to bid farewell to the 
game; for it surely is doomed. 

No, decidely no ! Do not attempt to pass game laws that will " jjlease 
everybody." The more the game-hogs are displeased, the better for the 
game ! The game-hogs form a very small and very insignificant minority 
of the whole People. Why please one man at the expense of ninty-nine 
others? The game of a state belongs to The People as a whole, not to 
the gunners alone. The great, patient, — and sometimes sleepy, — 
majority has vested rights in it, and it is for it to say how it shall and 
shall not be killed. Heretofore the gunning minority has been dictating 
the game laws of America, and the result is — progressive extermination. 

First of all, Oregon should bury the pernicious idea of individual and local laws. 

She should enact a concise, clearly cut, and thoroughly effective code of wild life 
laws, just as New York did last winter. 

Her game seasons should be uniform in application, all over the state. 

Every species of bird, mammal or fish that is threatened with extermination should 
be given a close season of f roin five to ten years. 

It is now time to protect the white goose and brant. Squirrels, band-tailed pigeons 
and doves should be perpetually protected. 

The State Game Commission should have power to close the shooting seasons on 
any species of game in any locality, whenever a species is threatened with extinction. 

The sale of native wild game, from all sources, should be permanently stopped, by 
a Bayne law. 

The use of automatic, "autoloading" and pump shot guns in hunting should be 
perpetually barred. 

Pennsylvania: 

As a game protecting state, Pennsylvania is a close second to New York 
and Massachusetts. She protects all native game from sale; she has the 
courage to prohibit aliens from owning guns; she bars out automatic shot- 
guns in hunting; she makes refuges for deer, and feeds her quail in winter, 
and she permits the killing of no female deer, or fawns with horns less 
than three inches in length. Her splendid State Game Commission is 
fighting hard for a hunter's license law, and will win the fight for it at the 
next session of the legislature (1913). 

But there are certain things that Pennsylvania should do: 

She should stop all spring shooting. She must stop killing doves, blackbirds, wild 
turkeys, sandpipers, and all the squirrels save the red squirrel. 

She should give all her shore birds a rest of at least five years, for recuperation. 

She should enact a comprehensive Dutcher plumage law, stopping the sale of 
aigrettes. 

vShe should provide a resident license to furnish her Game Commission willi ade- 
quate funds to carry on its work and exterminate game-killing vermin. 

Rhode Island: 

Little Rhody needs some good, small bag limits; for now (1912) she has none! 



29% OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

She should enact a Bayne law, aPennsylvania law against aliens, and a New Jersey 
law against the automatic and pump guns. 

She should stop killing the beautiful wood-duck, and gray squirrel. 
She should stop all spring shooting of waterfowl. 

vSouTH Carolina; 

She should save her game while she still has some to save. 

First of all, stop spring shooting; secondly, enact a Bayne law. 

In the name of mystery, who is there in South Carolina who desires to kill 
grackles? And why? 

And where is the gentleman sportsman who has come down to killing foolish and 
tame little doves for "sport?" Stop it at once, for the credit of the state. 

Enact a dollar resident license law and thus provide adequate funds for game pro- 
tection. 

South Carolina bag limits are all 50 per cent too high ; and they should be reduced. 

It is strange to see one of the oldest of the states lagging in game 
protection, far behind such new states as New Mexico and Oklahoma; 
but South Carolina does lag. It is time for her to consider her position, 
and reform. 

South Dakota: 

South Dakota should stop all spring shooting. 

Her game-bag limits are really no limits at all! They should be reduced about 
66 per cent without a moment's unnecessary delay. 

The two year term of the State Warden is too short for effective work. It should be 
extended to four years. 

Unless South Dakota wishes to repeat the folly of such states as 
Indiana, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri and Ohio, she needs to be up and doing. 
If her people want a gameless state, except for migratory waterfowl, all 
they need do is to slumber on, and they surely will have it. Why wait 
until greedy sportsmen have killed the last game bird of the state before 
seriously taking the matter in hand? In one act, all the shortcomings 
of the present laws can be corrected. 

South Dakota needs no Bayne law, because she prohibits at all times 
the sale or exportation of all wild game. 

Tennessee: 

In wild life protection, Tennessee has much to do. She made her 
start late in life, and what she needs to do is to draft with care and 
enact with cheerful alacrity certain necessary amendments. 

We notice that there are open seasons for blackbirds, robins, doves and 
squirrels! It seems incredible; but it is true. 

Behold the blackbird as a "game" bird, with a lawful open season 
from September 1 to January 1. Consider its stately carriage, its rapid 
flight on the wing, its running and hiding powers when attacked. As a 
test of marksmanship, as the real thing for the expert wing shot, is it not 



NEW LAWS NEEDED IN THE STATES 297 

great? Will not any self-respecting dog be proud to point or retrieve 
them? And what flesh for the table! 

Fancy an able-bodied sportsman going out in a fifty-dollar hunting 
suit, carrying a fifteen-dollar gun behind a seven-dollar dog, and return- 
ing with a glorious bag of twenty-five blackbirds ! Or robins ! Or doves ! 
Proud indeed, would we be to belong (which we don't) to a club of ' ' sports- 
men " who go out shooting blackbirds, and robins, and foolish little doves, 
as "game!" "Game" indeed, are those birds, — for little lads of seven 
who do not know better; but not for boys of twelve who have in their 
veins any inheritance of sporting blood. (I am proud of the fact that 
at twelve years of age, — and ever so keen to " go hunting," — I knew with- 
out being told that squirrels and doves were not real "game" for real 
boys.) 

The killers of doves, squirrels, blackbirds and robins belong in the 
same class as the sparrow-and-linnet-killing Italians of Venice, Milan 
and Turin, and in that company we will leave them. 

Tennessee needs: 

A resident license system to provide funds for game protection. 
A salaried warden force. 

A law prohibiting spring shooting of shore birds and waterfowl. 
A law protecting robins, doves and other non-game birds not covered by the 
present statute. 

Texas: 

I remember well when the great battle was fought in Texas by the 
gallant men and women of the State Audubon Society, to compel the 
people of Texas to learn the economic value to agriculture and cotton of 
the insectivorous birds. The name of the splendid Brigadier-General 
who led the Army of the Defense was Capt. M. B. Davis. That was in 
1903. 

Since that great fight was won, Texas has been a partly reformed 
state, at times quite jealous of her bird life; but still she tolerates spring 
shooting and has not made adequate close seasons for her waterfowl; 
which is wrong. To-day, the people of Texas do not need to be told that 
forty-three species of birds feed on the cotton boll weevil ; for they know it. 

On the whole, and for a southern state, the wild-life laws of Texas 
are in fairly good shape. On account of the absence of game-scourge 
markets, a Bayne law is not so imperatively necessary there as in certain 
other states. All the game of the state is protected from sale. 

We do assert, however, that if robins are slaughtered as F. L. Crow, 
the former Atlantan asserts, all robin shooting should be forever stopped; 
that the pinnated grouse should be given a seven-year close season, and 
that doves should be taken off the list of game birds and perpetually pro- 
tected, both for economic and sentimental reasons, and also because the 
too weak and confiding dove is not a "game" bird for red-blooded men. 

Texas should enact without delay a law providing close seasons for ducks, geese and 
other waterfowl; 

A law prohibiting spring shooting, and 

A provision reducing the limit on deer to two bucks a season. 



298 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Utah; 

The laws of Utah are far from being up to the requirements of the 
present hour. One strange thing has happened in Utah. 

When I spent a week in Salt Lake City in 1888, and devoted some time 
to inquiring into game conditions, the laws of the state were very bad. 
At the mouth of Bear River, ducks were being slaughtered for the markets 
by the tens of thousands. The cold-blooded, wide open and utterly 
shameless way in which it was being done, right at the doors of Salt Lake 
City, was appalling. 

At the same time, the law permitted the slaughter of spotted fawns. 
I saw a huge drygoods box filled to the top with the flat skins of slaugh- 
tered innocents, 260 in number, that a rascal had collected and was offering 
at fifty cents each. In reply to a question as to their use, he said: "I 
tink de sportsmen like 'em for to make vests oud of." He lived at 
Rawlins, Wyo. 

After a long and somnolent period, during which hundreds of thous- 
ands of ducks, geese, brant and other birds had been slaughtered for 
market at the Bear River shambles and elsewhere, the state awoke suffi- 
ciently to abate a portion of the disgrace by passing a bag-limit law 
<1897). 

And then came Nature's punishment upon Utah for that duck 
slaughter. The ducks of Great Salt Lake became afflicted with a terrible 
epidemic disease (intestinal coccidiosis) which swept off thousands, and 
stopped the use of Utah ducks as food! It was a ' 'duck plague," no less. 
It has prevailed for three years, and has not yet by any means been 
stamped out. It seems to be due to the fact that countless thousands 
of ducks have been feeding on the exposed alluvial flats at the mouth 
of the creek that drains off the sewage of Salt Lake City. The condi- 
tions are said to be terrible. 

To-day, Utah is so nearly destitute of big game that the subject is 
hardly worthy of mention. Of her upland game birds, only a fraction 
remains, and as her laws stand to-day, she is destined to beconie in the 
near future a gameless state. In a dry region like this, the wild life always 
hangs on by a slender thread, and it is easy to exterminate it ! 

Utah should instantly stop the sale of game that she now legally provides for, — 
twenty-five shore birds and waterfowl per day to private parties ! 

Deer should be given a ten-year close season, at once. All bag limits should in- 
stantly be reduced one-half. The sage grouse, quail, swans, woodcock, dove, and all 
shore birds should be given a ten-year close season, — and rigidly protected, — before 
the stock is all gone. 

The model law for the protection of non-game birds should be enacted at once. 

The absolute protection of elk, antelope and sheep (until 1913) should be extended 
for twenty years. 

Utah should create a big-game preserve, at once. 

If Utah proposes to save even a remnant of her wild life for posterity, 
she must be up and doing. 



NEW LAWS NEEDED IN THE STATES 29&' 

Vermont : 

In view of all conditions, it must be stated that the game laws of 
Vermont are, with but slight exceptions, in good condition. It is a 
pleasure to see that there is no spring shooting; that there is no "open" 
season of slaughter for the moose, caribou, wood-duck, swan, upland 
plover, dove or rail ; that no buck deer with antlers less than three inches 
long inay be killed ; and that there is a law under which damages by deer 
to growing crops inay be assessed and paid for by the county in which 
they occur. Moreover, if there is to be any killing of game, her bag 
limits are not extravagant. All the game protected by the state is im- 
mune from sale for food purposes, but preserve-reared game inay legally 
be sold. We recommend the following new measures: 

Absolute close seasons of five-years' duration for ruffed grouse, quail, woodcock, 
snipe and all shore birds without a single exception. 

The gray squirrel should be perpetually protected, — because he is too beautiful, 
too companionable and too unfit for food to be killefl. Even the hungry savages of 
the East Indies do not eat squirrels. 

Pass an automatic pump-gun law. 

Extend the term of the Fish and Game Commissioner to four years. 

Vermont's great success in introducing and colonizing deer is both 
interesting and valuable. Fifty years ago, she had no wild deer, because 
the species had been practically exterminated. In 1875, thirteen deer 
were imported from the Adirondacks and set free in the mountains. The 
increase has been enormous. In 1909 the number of deer killed for the 
year was about 5,311, which was possible without adversely affecting the 
herds. It is a striking object-lesson in restoring the white-tailed deer to- 
its own, and it will be found more fully described in chapter XXIV. 

Virginia: 

Virginia is far below the position that she should occupy in wild-life 
conservation. To set her house in order, and come up to the level of the 
states that have been born during the past twenty years, she must bestir 
herself in these ways : 

She must provide for a resident hunting license, a State Game Commissioner and 
a force of salaried wardens. 

She must prohibit spring shooting. 

She must impose small bag limits on game-slaughter. 

She must resolutely stop the sale of all wild game. 

She must stop the killing of female deer, and of bucks with horns under three 
inches long. 

She must stop killing gray squirrels and doves as "game." 

She .should not permit the beautiful wood-duck to be killed as "game." 

She should accord a five-year close season to grouse, and all shore birds. 

She should rule out the machine shot-guns which gentlemen can no longer use in 
hunting. 

She should adopt at once a comprehensive code of game laws, and 



300 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

clean her house in one siege, instead of fiddling and fussing with all these 
matters one by one, through a series of ten long, weary years. The time 
for puttering with game protection has gone by. It is now time to make 
short cuts to comprehensive results, and save the game before it is too late. 

Washington: 

The state of Washington still flatters herself that she has all kinds of 
big game to kill, — moose, antelope, goat, sheep, caribou and deer. Evi- 
dently this is on the theory that so long as a species is not extinct, it is 
"legal " and right to pursue it with rifles during a specified "open season." 

The people of Washington need to be told that conditions have greatly 
changed, and it is now high time to put on the brakes. It is time for them 
to realize that if they wait any longer for the sportsmen to take the 
initiative in securing the enactment of really adequate preservation lav/s, 
all their big game will be dead before those laws are born! Every man 
shrinks from cutting off his own pet privilege. 

Some of the game laws of Washington are up to date; and her big- 
game laws look all right to the unaided eye, but are not. Her bird laws 
are a chaotic jumble of local exceptions and special privileges. As a net 
result of all her shortcomings, the remnant of a once fine fauna of big 
game and feathered game is surely being exterminated according to law. 
A few local exceptions will not disprove the general truthfulness of this 
assertion. 

Ten years ago a few men in Seattle resented the idea of outside co- 
operation in the protection of Washington game. They said they were 
abundantly able to take care of it; but the march of events has proven 
that they overestimated their capacity. To-day the wild-life laws of 
that state are only half baked. Come what may to me, I shall set down 
without malice the things that the great and admirable State of Wash- 
ington should do to set her house in order. It is not good for the 
resourceful and progressive men of the Great Northwest to be clear 
behind the times in these matters. 

Stop local game legislation, and enact a code of laws covering the entire 
state, uniformly. County legislation is twenty years behind the times! 

For ten (10) full years, stop the killing of elk, mountain sheep, mountain goat, 
caribou, inoose, and antelope. Regarding deer, I am in doubt. 

Prohibit the sale of all wild game, no matter where killed, by the enactment of a 
Bayne law, complete, which will also 

Promote the breeding, killing and sale of domestic game for food purposes. 

Make a careful investigation of the present status of your sage grouse, every other 
grouse, quail, and all species of shore birds, then give a five-year close season, all over 
the state, to every species that is "becoming scarce." This will embrace certainly 
one-half of the whole number, if not two-thirds. 

Provide two bird refuges in the eastern portion of the state, where they are very 
greatly needed to supplement the good effects of the State Game Preserve estab- 
lished on Puget Sound in 1911. 

Bar the use in hunting of the odious automatic and pump shotguns that are now so 
generally in use all over the United States to the great detriment of the game and the 
people. 



NEW LAWS NEED F. I) IN THE STATES 301 

West Virginia: 

Considering the fact that West Virginia contains no plague-spot city 
for the consumption of commercial wild game, that the sale of all game 
is prohibited at all times, and the game of the state may not be exported 
for sale elsewhere, the wild life of West Virginia is reasonably secure from 
the market gunner, — if an adequate salaried warden force is provided. 
Without such a force her game must continue to be destroyed in the 
future as in the past to supply the markets of Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, 
Baltimore and Washington. The deer law is excellent, and the non-game 
birds, and the dove and wood-duck are perpetually protected. 

One fly in the ointment is — spring shooting; which for ducks, geese 
and brant continues from September 1 to April 20. Unfortunately the 
law enacted in 1875 against spring shooting has been repealed, and so has 
the resident hunting license law (1911). 

In view of the impossibility of imagining a good reason for the repeal 
of a good law, we recommend : 

That the law against spring shooting be re-enacted. 

That the resident hunter's license law be re-enacted, and tlie proceeds specifically 
devoted to the preservation and increase of game. 

That a force of regular salaried wardens be provided to enforce the laws. 

That the bag limit on quail should be 10 per day or 40 per season, instead of 12 and 
96; and on ruffed grouse it should be 3 per day (as in New York) or 12 per season. 
One wild turkey per day, or three per season is quite enough for one man. The 
visible supply will not justify the existing limit of two and six. 

Wisconsin: 

In spite of the fierce fight made in 1910-11 by the saloon-element 
game-shooters of Milwaukee for the control of the wild-life situation, and 
the repeal of the best protective laws of the state, the Army of Defense 
once more defeated the Allied Destroyers, and drove them off the field. 
Once more it was proven that when The People are aroused, they are 
abundantly able to send the steam roller over the enemies of wild life. 

Alphabetically, Wisconsin may come near the end of the roll-call; 
but by downright merit in protection, she comes mighty close to the head 
of the list of states. Her slate of "Work to be done" is particularly 
clean; and she has our most distinguished admiration. Her force of 
game wardens is not a political-machine force. It amounts to some- 
thing. The men who get within it undergo successfully a civil service 
examination that certainly separates the sheep from the goats. For 
particulars address Dr. T, S. Palmer, Department of Agriculture, Wash- 
ington. 

According to the standards that have been dragging along previous 
to this moment, Wisconsin has a good series of game laws. But the hour 
for a Reformation of ideas and principles has struck. We heard it first 
in April, 1911. The wild life of America must not be exterminated 
according to law, contrary to law, or in the absence of law ! Wisconsin 



302 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

must take a fresh grip on her game situation, or it will get away from her, 
after all. 

Not another prairie chicken or woodcock should be killed in Wisconsin between 
1912 and 1922. When any small bird becomes so scarce that the bag limit needs to 
be cut down to five, as it now is for the above in Wisconsin, it is time to stop for ten 
years, before it is too late. 

Wisconsin should immediately busy herself about the creation of bird and game 
preserves. 

For goodness sake, Wisconsin, stop killing squirrels as "game!" You ought to 
know better — and you do ! Leave that form of barbarism for the Benighted States. 

And pass a law shutting out the machine guns. They are a disgrace to our country, 
and a scourge to our game. Continually are they leading good men astray. 

Extend the term of your State Warden to four years. 

Wyoming: 

The State of Wyoming once had a magnificent heritage of game. 
It embraced the Rocky Mountain species, and also those of the great 
plains. First and last, the state has worked hard to protect her wild life, 
and hold the killing of it down to a decent basis. 

As far back as 1889, I met on the Shoshone River a very wide-awake 
warden, actually "on his job," who was maintained by a body of private 
citizens headed by Col. Pickett and known as the Northern Wyoming 
Game Protective Association. And even then we saw that the laws were 
too liberal for the game. In one man's cold-storage dug-out we saw 
enough sheep, deer and elk meat to subsist a company of hungry dra- 
goons, all killed and possessed according to law. 

In the protection of her mountain game, Wyoming has had a hard task. 
In the Yellowstone Park between 1889 and 1894, the poachers for the 
taxidermists of Livingston and elsewhere slaughtered 270 bison out of 
300; and Howell was the only man caught. England can protect game 
in far-distant mountains and wildernesses; but America can not, — or at 
least we don't! With us, men living in remote places who find wild game 
about them say " To h — with the law ! " They kill on the sly, in season 
and out of season, females and males; and the average local jury simply 
will not convict the average settler who is accused of such a trifling in- 
discretion as killing game out of season when he "needs the meat." 

And so, with laws in full force protecting females, the volume of big 
game steadily disappears, everywhere west of the Alleghanies where the 
law permits big-game hunting! An interesting chapter might be written 
on game exterminated according to law. 

The deadly defects in the protection of western big game are : 
Structural weakness in the enforcement of the laws ; 
Collusion between offenders for the suppression of evidence; 
Perjury on the witness stand; 

Dishonesty and disloyalty on the part of local jurors when friends 
are on trial; 



NEW LAWS NEEDED IN THE STATES 



303 









-..'"§ 'it'.::: 



V/-'.V •"-".■■ ■* • ''•••^'.25 ••';• ••' 'rm'." • •i^"-"-""""-""X-S' - •• "S^ 
S/. . ••V. •• . . I ■••;•... $/ ••..•• •.[kan] 1- 'r-^-^. 




4^ "J*^ 7 



■K-:.":-l' Bi-$5 
• -'.■.■.■ ;'• •" •' - • r : : ; : f:":-":~'T fo^<iTii : : ♦""' 

""' ;iI^J;::: vi^Txt::::::;';/H-^: 
::::.•:.•::Ili:Z5l.•:.•::: 





From Farmers' Bulletin No. 510, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture 

STATES AND PROVINCES WHICH REQUIRE RESIDENTS TO OBTAIN HUNTING 

LICENSES, 1912 

In Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma and Rhode Island an additional fee of 10 
to 20 cents is charged for issuing the license. 

Inclosed names indicate States which permit residents to hunt on their own land without 
license. Nova Scotia has a $o resident license and exempts landowners. 

Note that many of the States adopt the French method of exempting landowners, while some, 
particularly in the West follow the English method of requiring everyone who hunts to obtain a 
license. 

Sympathy of judges for "the poor man" who wants to eat the 
game to save his cattle and sheep. 
Elsewhere there appears a statement regarding the elk of Jackson 
Hole, and the efforts made and being made to save them. At this point 
we are interested in the game of Wyoming as a whole. 

First of all, the killing of mountain sheep should absolutely cease, for ten years. 

A similar ten-year close season should be accorded moose and prong-horned antelope. 

All grouse should now be classed with doves and swans (no open season), and kept 
there for ten years. 

Spring shooting is wrong in principle and vicious in practice; and it should be 
stopped in Wyoming, as elsewhere. 

The automatic and pump shotguns when used in hunting are a disgrace to Wyoming, 
as they are to other states, and should be suppressed; and the silencer for use in hunt- 
ing is in the black list. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

NEED FOR A FEDERAL MIGRATORY BIRD LAW, NO-SALE- 
OF-GAME LAW, AND OTHERS 

We are assuming that the American people sincerely desire the ade- 
quate protection and increase of bird life, for reasons that are both 
sentimental and commercial. Surely every good citizen dislikes to see 
millions of dollar's worth of national wealth foolishly wasted, and he dis- 
likes to pay any unnecessary increased cost of living. There must be 
several millions of Americans who feel that way, and who are disposed 
to demand a complete revolution in bird protection. 

There are four needs of wild bird life that are fundamental, and that 
can not be ignored, any more than a builder can ignore the four corner- 
stones of his building. Listed in the order of their importance, they are 
as follows : 

1. — The federal protection of all migratory birds. 
2. — The total suppression of the sale of native wild game. 
3. — The iotal suppression of spring shooting and of shooting in the 
breeding season, and 

4. — Long close seasons for all species that are about to be ''shot out.'' 

If the gunners of America wish to have a gameless continent, all they 
need do to secure it is to oppose these principles, prevent their translation 
into law, and maintain the status quo. If they do this, then all our 
. best birds are doomed to swift destruction. Let no man make a mistake on 
that point. The "open seasons" and "bag limits" of the United States 
to-day are just as deadly as the 5,000,000 sporting guns now in use, and 
the 700,000,000 annual cartridges. It is only the ignorant or the vicious 
who will seriously dispute this statement. 

The Federal Protection of Migratory Birds. — The bill now 
before Congress for the protection of all migratory birds by the national 
government is the most important measure ever placed before that body 
in behalf of wild life. A stranger to this proposition will need to pause 
for thought in order to grasp its full meaning, and appreciate the mag- 
nitude of its influence. 

The urgent necessity for a law of this nature is due to the utter 
inadequacy of the laws that prevail throughout some portions of the 
United States concerning the slaughter and preservation of birds. Any 
law that is not enforced is a poor law. There is not one state in the 



NEW GAME LAWS THAT ARE NEEDED 305 

Union, nor a single province in Canada, in which the game birds, and 
other birds criminally shot as game, are not being killed far faster than 
they are breeding, and thereby being exterminated. 

Several states are financially unable to employ a force of salaried 
gaine wardens; and wherever that is true, the door to universal slaughter 
is wide open. Let him who questions this take Virginia as a case in point. 
A loyal Virginian told me only this year that in his state the warden 
system is an ineffective farce, and the game is not protected, because the 
wardens can not afford to patrol the state for nothing. 

This condition prevails in a number of states, north and south, espe- 
cially south. It is my belief that throughout nine-tenths of the South, 
the negroes and poor whites are slaughtering birds exactly as they please. 
It is the permanent residents of the haunts of birds and game that are 
exterminating the wild life. 

The value of the birds as destroyers of noxious insects, has been set 
forth in Chapter XXIII. Their total value is enormous — or it would 
be if the birds were alive and here in their normal numbers. To-day there 
are about one-tenth as many birds as were alive and working thirty years 
ago. During the past thirty years the destruction of our game birds 
has been enormous, and the insectivorous birds have greatly decreased. 

The damages annually inflicted upon the farm, orchard and garden 
crops of this country are very great. When a city is destroyed by earth- 
quake or fire, and $100,000,000 worth of property is swept away, we are 
racked with horror and pity; and the cities of America pour out money 
like water to relieve the resultant distress. We are shocked because we 
can see the flames, the smoke and the ruins. 

And yet, we annually endure with perfect equanimity {because we 
can not see itf) a loss of nearly $400,000,000 worth of value that is de- 
stroyed by insects. The damage is inflicted silently, insidiously, without 
any scare heads or wooden type in the newspapers, and so we pay the 
price without protest. We know — when we stop to think of it — that 
not all this loss falls upon the producer. We know that every consumer 
of bread, cereals, vegetables and fruit pays his share of this loss! To-day, 
millions of people are groaning under the "increased cost of living." 
The bill for the federal protection of all migratory birds is directly in- 
tended to decrease the cost of living, by preventing outrageous waste; 
but of all the persons to whom the needs of that bill arc presented, how 
many will take the time to promote its quick passage by direct appeals 
to their members of Congress? We shall see. . 

The good that would be accomplished, annually, by the enactment of 
a law for the federal protection of all migratory birds is beyond com- 
putation; but it is my belief that within a very few years the increase 
in bird life would prevent what is now an annual loss of $250,000,000. 
It is beyond the power of man to protect his crops and fruit and trees as 
the bird millions would protect them — if they were here as they were in 
1870. The migratory bird bill is of vast importance because it would 
throw the strong arm of federal protection around 610 species of birds. 



306 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

The power of Uncle Sam is respected and feared in many places where 
the power of the state is ignored. 

The list of migratory birds includes most of the perching birds; all 
the shore birds {great destroyers of bad insects) ; all the swifts and 
swallows ; the goat-suckers (whippoorwill and nighthawk) ; some of 
the woodpeckers; most of the rails; pigeons and doves; many of the 
hawks; some of the cranes and herons and all the geese, ducks and 
swans. 

A movement for the federal protection of migratory game birds was 
proposed to Congress by George Shiras, 3rd, who as a member of the 
House in the 58th Congress introduced a bill to secure that end. An 
excellent brief on that subject by Mr. Shiras appeared in the printed 
hearing on the McLean bill, held on March 6, 1912, page 18. Omitting 
the bills introduced in the 59th, 60th and 61st sessions, inention need 
be made only of the measures under consideration in the present Congress. 
One of these is a bill introduced by Representative J. W. Weeks, of 
Massachusetts, and another is the bill of Representative D. R. Anthony, 
Jr., of Kansas, of the same purport. 

Finally, on April 24, 1912, an adequate and entirely reasonable bill 
was introduced in the Senate by Senator George P. McLean, of Con- 
necticut, as No. 6497 (Calendar No. 606). This bill provides federal 
protection for all migratory birds, and embraces all save a very few of the 
species that are specially destructive to noxious insects. The bill provides 
national protection to the farmer's and fruit-grower's best friends. It is 
entitled to the enthusiastic support of 90,000,000 of people, native and 
alien. Every producer of farm products and every consumer of them owes 
it to himself to write at once to his member of Congress and ask him 
(1) to urge the speedy consideration of the bill for the federal protection 
of all migratory birds, (2) to vote for it, and (3) to work for it until it is 
passed. It matters not which one of the three bills described finally 
becomes a law. Will the American people act rationally about this 
matter, and protect their own interests ? 

Suppress the Sale of All Native Wild Game. — The deadly effect 
of the commercial slaughter of game and its sale for food is now becoming 
well understood by the American people. One by one the various state 
legislatures have been putting up the bars against the exportation or sale 
of any "game protected by the state." The U. S. Department of Agri- 
culture says, through Henry Oldys, that "free marketing of wild game 
leads swiftly to extermination;" and it is literally true. 

Up to March, 1911, it appears that several states prohibited the sale 
of game, sixteen states permitted the sale of all unprotected game, and 
in eight more there was partial prohibition. Unfortunately, however, 
many of these states permitted the sale of imported game. Now, since 
it happened to be a fact that the vast majority of the states prohibit the 
export of their game, as well as the sale of it, a very large quantity of 
such game as quail, ruffed grouse, snipe, woodcock and shore birds was 
illegally shot for the market, exported in defiance both of state laws and 



NEW GAME LAWS THAT ARE NEEDED 



307 




PREPAREP b^ 

L.S.B10LOGICA.L ScRiri' 

i MARCH. 1911. 

i&TtNDEp-TO Wov, (9U 



HH Sale or Omt r>oh.Mt«) JM£^ S-^lc »' Ncarl) .^11 Ginic Piol.iMtnl 

EIGHTEEN STATES ENTIRELY PROHIBIT THE SALE OP GAME 
WHY DO THE OTHERS LAG BEHIND? 

the federal Lacey Act, and sold to the detriment of the states that pro- 
duced it. In other words, in the laws of each state that merely souo^ht 
to protect their own game, regardless of the game of neighboring slates, 
there was not merely a loop-hole, but there was a gap wide enough to 
drive through with a coach and four. The ruffed grouse of Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut often were butchered to make Gotham holi- 
days in joyous contempt of the laws at both ends of the Hne. As a 
natural result the game of the Atlantic coast was disappearing at a 
frightful rate. 

In 1911, the no-sale-of-game law of New York was born out of sheer 
desperation. The Army of Destruction went up to Albany well -organized, 
well provided with money and attorneys, with three senators in the 
Senate and two assemblymen in the lower house, to wage merciless war- 
fare on the whole wild-life cause. The market gunners and game dealers 
not only proposed to repeal the law against spring shooting but also to 
defeat all legislation that might be attempted to restrict the sale of game, 
or impose bag limits on wild fowl. The Milliners' Association proposed 
to wipe off the books the Butcher law against the use of the plumage of 
wild birds in millinery, and an assemblyman was committed to that cause 
as its special champion. 

Then it was that all the friends of wild life in the Empire State re- 
solved upon a death grapple with the Destroyers, and a fight to an abso- 
ute finish. The Bayne bill, entirely prohibiting the sale of all native 
wild game throughout the state of New York, was drafted and thrown 



308 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

into the ring, and the struggle began. At first the no-sale-of-game bill 
looked like sheer madness, but no sooner was it fairly launched than 
supporters came flocking in from every side. All the organizations of 
sportsmen and friends of wild life combined in one mighty army, the 
strength of which was irresistible. The real sportsmen of the state 
quickly realized that the no-sale bill was directly in the interest of legitimate 
sport. The great mass of people who love wild life, and never kill, were 
quick to comprehend the far-reaching importance of the measure, and 
they supported it, with money and enthusiasm. 

The members of the legislature received thousands of letters from 
their constituents, asking them to support the Bayne-Blauvelt bill. They 
did so. On its passage through the two houses, only one vote was recorded 
against it! Incidentally, every move attempted by the Army of De- 
struction was defeated and in the final summing up the defeat amounted 
to an utter rout. 

In 1912, after a tremendous struggle, the legislature of Massachusetts 
passed a counterpart of the Bayne law, and took her place in the front 
rank of states. That was a great fight. The market-gunners of Cape 
Cod, the game dealers and other interests entered the struggle with men 
in the lower house of the legislature specially elected to look after their 
interests. Just as in New York in 1911, they proposed to repeal the 
existing laws against spring shooting and throw the markets wide open 
to the sale of game. From first to last, through three long and stormy 
months, the Destroyers fought with a degree of determination and per- 
sistence worthy of a better cause. They contested with the Defenders 
every inch of ground. In New York, the Destroyers were overwhelmed 
by the tidal wave of Defenders, but in Massachusetts it was a prolonged 
hand-to-hand fight on the ramparts. Five times was a bill to repeal the 
spring-shooting law introduced and defeated! 

Even after the bill had passed both houses by good majorities, the 
Governor declared that he could not sign it. And then there poured into 
the Executive offices such a flood of callers, letters, telegrams and tele- 
phone calls that he became convinced that the People desired the law; 
so he signed the bill in deference to the wishes of the majority. 

The principle that the sale of game is wrong, and fatal to the existence 
of a supply of game, is as fixed and unassailable as the Rocky Mountains. 
Its universal acceptance is only a question of intelligence and common 
honesty. The open states owe it to themselves and each other to enact 
both the spirit and the letter of the Bayne law, and do it quickly, before 
it is too late to profit by it ! Let them remember the heath hen, — amply 
protected when entirely too late to save it from extinction! 

It is fairly beyond question that the killing of wild game for the 
market, and its sale in the "open season" and out of it, is responsible for 
the disappearance of at least fifty per cent of our stock of American 
feathered game. It is the market-gunner, the game-hog who shoots "for 
sport " and sells his game, and the game dealer, who have swept away the 
wild ducks, the ruffed grouse, the quail and the prairie chickens that 



NEW GAME LAWS THAT ARE NEEDED 



309 



Migration Area of II species 

of Duclcs that winter on 

Carrituck Sound. 



' Migration Area of 

> 5 species of Ducks 

' r 

1 that winter on 

' Carrituclc Sound. 



THE 
THREE GREAT 
KILLING-GROUNDS. 

16 species of 

Ducks " winter " 

on the three great 

Bays where they 

can get food. 

These are : 
Great South Bay, 
Sarnegat Bay and 
Carrituck Sound. 

On the latter 

probably 200,000 

wild fowl are 

killed annually 

for northern markets. 






THIS MAP SHOWS 

HOW THE SALE OF DUCKS KILLED ON CARRITUCK SOUND 

ROBS THE PEOPLE OF 16 STATES, FOR THE BENEFIT OF A FEW. 

STOP THE SALE OF CAME! 




SOUND 



MAP USED IN THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE BAYNE LAW 



thirty years ago were abundant on their natural ranges. The foolish 
farmers of the middle West permitted the market-hunters of Chicago and 
the East to slaughter their own legitimate game by the barrel and the 
car-load, and ship it "East," to market. To-day the waters of Currituck 
Sound are a wholesale slaughter-place for migratory wild fowl with which 
to supply the markets of Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia. 
Furthermore, the market gunners of Currituck are robbing the people 
of 16 states of tens of thousands of wild-fowl that legitimately belong 
to them, during the annual autumn flight. The accompanying map 
shows how it is done. 

To-day, the cash rewards of the market-hunter who can reach a large 
city with his product are dangerously great. Observe the following 
wholesale prices that prevailed in New York city in 1910, just prior to 
the passage of the Bayne law. They were compiled and published by 
Henry Oldys, of the Biological Survey. 



Grouse, domestic per pair. 

Grouse, foreign " " . 

Partridge, domestic " " . 



$3.00 
.$1.25 to 1.75 
. 3.50 " 4.00 



310 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 



" 


1.50 '• 


2.00 


dozen. . 


2.50 " 


3.50 


" 


2.00 " 


3.00 


pair. . . . 


2.25 " 


3.00 




1.50 " 


2.50 
1.25 




.75 " 


1.00 




.75 " 


.90 




.50 " 


.75 


dozen. . 




1.00 
.60 


pound. . 


.22 " 


.25 


" 


.30 " 


.35 



Woodcock, domestic " 

Golden plover per 

English snipe " 

Canvasback duck per 

Redhead duck " 

Mallard duck " 

Bluewing teal " 

Greenwing teal . " 

Broadbill duck " 

Rail, No. 1 per 

Rail, No.2 " 

Venison, whole deer per 

Venison, saddle " 

All our feathered game is rapidly slipping away from us. Are we going 
to save anything from the wreck? Will we so weakly manage the game 
situation that later on there will be no legitimate bird-shooting for our 
younger sons, and our grandsons? 

All laws that permit the killing of game for the market, and the sale 
of it afterward, are class legislation of the worst sort. They permit a 
hundred men selfishly to slaughter for their own pockets the game that 
rightfully belongs to a hundred thousand men and boys who shoot for the 
legitimate recreation that such field sports afford. Will any of the sports- 
men of America "stand for" this until the game is all gone? 

The people who pay big prices for game in the hotels and restaurants 
of our big cities are not men who need that game as food. Far from it. 
They can obtain scores of fine meat dishes without destroying the wild 
flocks. In civilized countries wild game is no longer necessary as "food," 
to satisfy hunger, and ward off starvation. In the United States the day 
of the hungry Indian-fighting pioneer has gone by and there is an 
abundance of food everywhere. 

The time to temporize and feel timid over the game situation has gone 
by. The situation is desperate; and nothing but strong and vigorous 
measures will avail anything worth while. The sale of all wild game 
should be stopped, everywhere and at all seasons, throughout all North 
America, and throughout the world. To-day this particular curse is 
being felt even in India. 

It is the duty of every true sportsman, every farmer who owns a gun, 
and every lover of wild life, to enter into the campaign for the passage of 
bills absolutely prohibiting all traffic in wild game no matter what its 
origin. Of course the market hunters, the game-hogs and the game 
dealers will bitterly oppose them, and hire a lobby to attempt to defeat 
them. But the fight for no-sale-of-game is now on, and it must not stop 
short of complete victory. 

Reasons Why the Sale of Wild Game Should Cease Everywhere 

1. — Because fully 95 per cent of our legitimate stock of feathered 
game has already been destroyed. 

2. — Because if market -gunning and the sale of game continue ten 
years longer, all our feathered game will be swept away. 



NEW GAME LAWS THAT ARE NEEDED 311 

3. — Because when the sale of game was permitted one dealer was 
able "to sell 1,000,000 game birds per year in New York City, so he himself 
said. 

4 — Because it is a fixed fact that every wild species of mammal, bird 
or reptile that is pursued for money-making purposes eventually is wiped 
out of existence. Even the whales of the sea are no exception. 

5 — Because at least 50 per cent of the decrease in our feathered garne 
is due to market-gunning, and the sale of game. Look at the prairie 
chicken of the Mississippi' Valley, and the ruffed grouse of New England. 

6. — Because the laws that permit the commercial slaughter of wild 
birds for the benefit of less than five per cent of the inhabitants of any 
state are directly against the interest of the 95 per cent of other people, 
to who}yi that game partly belongs. 

7 — Because game killed "for sale" is not intended to satisfy "hun- 
ger." The people who eat game in large cities do not know what hunger 
is, save by hearsay. Purchased game is used chiefly in over-feeding; and 
as a rule it does far more harm than good. 

8 — Because the greatest value to be derived from any game bird is 
in seeing it, and photographing it, and enjoying its living company in its 
native haunts. Who will love the forests when they become destitute of 
wild life, and desolate? 

9. — Because stopping the sale of game will help bring back the game 
birds to us, in a few years. 

10. — Because the pace that New York and Massachusetts have set in 
this matter will render it easier to procure the passage of Bayne laws in 
other states. 

11 — Because those who legitimately desire game for their tables can 
be supplied from the game farms and preserves that now are coming into 
existence. 

When New York's far-reaching Bayne bill became a law, the follow- 
ing dead birds lay in cold storage in New York City : 

Wild duck 98,156 

Plover 48,780 

Quail 14,227 

Grouse 21,202 

Snipe 7,825 

Woodcock 767 

Rail •_ 419 

191,376 

They represented the last slaughterings of American game for New 
York. To-day the remaining plague-spots are Chicago, Philadelphia. 
San Francisco, Baltimore, Washington and New Oricans; but in New 
Orieans the brakes have at last (1912) been applied, and the market 
slaughter that formerly prevailed in that state has at least been checked. 

As an instance of persistent market shooting on the greatest ducking 



312 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

waters of the eastern United States, I offer this report from a trustworthy 
agent sent to Currituck Sound, North Carolina, in March, 1911. 

I beg to submit the following information relative to the number of wild ducks- 
and geese shipped from this market and killed in the waters of Back Bay and the upper 
or north end of Currituck Sound, from October 20th to March 1st, inclusive. 

Approximately there were killed and shipped in the territory above named, 130,000 
to 135,000 wild ducks and between 1400 and 1500 wild geese. From Currituck Sound 
and its tributaries there were shipped approximately 200,000 wild ducks. 

You will see from the above figures that each year the market shooter exacts a 
tremendous toll from the wild water fowl in these waters, and it is only a question of a 
short time when the wild duck will be exterminated, unless we can stop the ruthless 
slaughter. The last few years I have noted a great decrease in the number of wild 
ducks; some of the species are practically extinct. I have secured the above information 
from a most reliable source, and the figures given approximately cannot be questioned.. 

The effect of the passage of the Bayne law, closing the greatest Ameri- 
can market against the sale of game was an immediate decrease of ftdly 
fifty per cent in the number of ducks and geese slaughtered on Currituck 
Sound. The dealers refused to buy the birds, and one-half the killers 
were compelled to hang up their guns and go to work. The duck-slaugh- 
terers felt very much enraged by the passage of the law, and at first were 
inclined to blame the northern members of Currituck ducking clubs for 
the passage of the measure; but as a matter of fact, not one of the persons 
blamed took any part whatever in the campaign for the new law. 

The Unfairness of Spring Shooting. — The shooting of game birds 
in late winter and spring is to be mentioned only to be condemned. It is 
grossly unfair to the birds, outrageous in principle, and most unsports- 
manlike, no matter whether the law permits it or not. Why it is that 
any state like Iowa, for example, can go on killing game in spring is more 
than I can understand. I have endeavored to find a reason for it, in Iowa, 
but the only real reason is: — " The boys want the birds!" 

I think we have at last reached the point where it may truthfully be 
said that now no gentleman shoots birds in spring. If the plea is made 
that "if we don't shoot ducks in the spring we can't shoot them at all!" 
then the answer is — if you can't shoot game like high-minded, red- 
blooded sportsman, donH shoot it at all! A gentleman can not afford to 
barter his standing and his own self-respect for a few ducks shot in the 
spring when the birds are going north to lay their eggs. And the man who 
insists on shooting in spring may just as well go right on and do various 
other things that are beyond the pale, such as shoot quail on the ground, 
shoot does and fawns, and fish for trout with gang hooks. 

There are no longer two sides to what once was the spring shooting 
question. Even among savages, the breeding period of the wild creatures 
is under taboo. Then if ever may the beasts and birds cry "King's 
excuse ! " It has been positively stated in print that high-class fox hounds 
have been known to refuse to chase a pregnant fox, even when in full ^dew. 



CHAPTER XXXIIT 
BRINGING BACK THE VANISHED BIRDS AND GAME 

The most charming trait of wild-Hfe character is the alacrity and 
confidence with which wild birds and mammals respond to the friendly 
advances of human friends. Those who are not very familiar with the 
mental traits of our wild neighbors may at first find it difficult to com- 
prehend the marvelous celerity with which both birds and mammals 
recognize friendly overtures from man, and respond to them. 

At the present juncture, this state of the wild-animal mind becomes 
a factor ^of great importance in determining what we can do to prevent 
the extermination of species, and to promote the increase and return 
of wild life. 

I think that there is not a single wild mainmal or bird species now 
living that can not, or does not, quickly recognize protection, and take 
advantage of it. The most conspicuous of all familiar examples are the 
wild animals of the Yellowstone Park. They embrace the elk, mountain 
-sheep, antelope, mule deer, the black bear and even the grizzly. No one 
•can say precisely how long those several species were in ascertaining that 
it was safe to trust themselves within easy rifle-shot of man ; but I think 
it was about five years. Birds recognize protection far more quickly 
than mammals. In a comparatively short time the naturally wild and 
wary big game of the Yellowstone Park became about as tame as range 
■cattle. It was at least fifteen years ago that the mule deer began to 
frequent the parade ground at the Mammoth Hot Springs military post, 
and receive there their rations of hay. 

Whenever you see a beautiful photograph of a large band of big- 
Tiorn sheep or mule deer taken at short range amid Rocky Mountain 
■scenery, you are safe in labeling it as having come from the Yellowstone 
Park. The prong-horned antelojje herd is so tame that it is difficult to 
keep it out of the streets of Gardiner, on the Montana side of the line. 

But the bears! Who has not heard the story of the bears of the 
Yellowstone Park, — how black bears and grizzlies stalk out of the woods, 
■every day, to the garbage dumping-ground; how black bears actually 
have come into the hotels for food, without breaking the truce, and how 
the grizzlies boldly raid the grub-wagons and cook-tents of campers, 
taking just what they please, because they know that no man dares to 
shoot them! Indeed, those raiding bears long ago became a public 
nuisance, and many of them have been caught in steel box-traps and 
■shipped to zoological gardens, in order to get them out of the way. And 
yet, outside the Park boundaries, everywhere, the bears are as wary and 
wild as the wildest. 



314 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

The arrogance of the bears that couldn't be shot once led to a droll 
and also exciting ejiisode. 

During the period when Mr. C. J. Jones ("Buffalo" Jones) was 
superintendent of the wild animals of the Park, the indignities inflicted 
upon tourist campers by certain grizzly bears quite abraded his nerves. 
He obtained from Major Pitcher authority to punish and reform a certain 
grizzly, and went about the matter in a thoroughly Buffalo-Jonesian 
manner. He procured a strong lariat and a bean-pole seven feet long 
and repaired to the camp that was troubled by too much grizzly 

The particular offender was a full-grown male grizzly who had become 
a notorious raider. At the psychological moment Jones lassoed him in 
short order, getting a firm hold on the bear's left hind leg. Quickly the 
end of the rope was thrown over a limb of the nearest tree, and in a trice 
Ephraim found himself swinging head downward between the heavens 
and the earth. And then his punishment began. 

Buffalo Jones thrashed him soundly with the bean-pole! The out- 
raged bear swung to and fro, whirled round and round, clawing and 
snapping at the empty air, roaring and bawling with rage, scourged in 
flesh and insulted in spirit. As he swung, the bean-pole searched out 
the different parts of his anatomy with a wonderful degree of neatness 
and precision. Between rage and indignation the grizzly nearly ex- 
ploded. A moving-picture camera was there, and since that day that 
truly moving scene has amazed and thrilled countless thousands of people. 

When it was over, Mr. Jones boldly turned the bear loose ! Although 
its rage was as boundless as the glories of the Yellowstone Park, it paused 
not to rend any of those present, but headed for the tall timber, and with 
many an indignant "Woof! Woof!" it plunged in and disappeared. It 
was two or three years before that locality was again troubled by impu- 
dent grizzly bears. 

And what is the mental attitude of every Rocky Mountain black or 
grizzly bear outside of the Yellowstone Park? It is colossal suspicion of 
man, perpetual fear, and a clean pair of heels the moment man-scent or 
man-sight proclaims the proximity of the Arch Enemy of Wild Creatures. 
And yet there are one or two men who tell the American public that 
wild animals do not think, that they do not reason, and are governed only 
by "instinct"! 

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing!" 

Taming Wild Birds. — As incontestable proof of the receptive facul- 
ties of birds, I will cite the taming of wild birds in the open, by friendly 
advances. There are hundreds, aye, thousands, of men, women, boys 
and girls who could give interesting and valuable personal testimony on 
this point. 

My friend J. Alden Loring (one of the naturalists of the Roosevelt 
African Expedition), is an ardent lover of wild birds and mammals. 
The taming of wild creatures in the open is one of his pastimes, and his 
results serve well to illustrate the marvelous readiness of our wild neigh- 



BRINGING BACK VANISHED BIRDS AND GAME 



315 




sl.v \\ 11 1) 



H MR. l.ORING 



bors to become close friends with man when protected. 1 will quote from 
one of Mr. Loring's letters on this subject : 

" Taming wild birds is a new field in nature study, and one never can 
tell what success he will have until he has experimented with different 
species. Some birds tame much more easily than others. On three or 
four occasions I have enticed a chickadee to my hand at the first attempt, 
while in other cases it has taken from fifteen minutes to a whole day. 

"Chipping sparrows that frequent my doorway I have tamed in two 
days. A nuthatch required three hours before it would fly to my hand, 
although it took food from my stick the first time it was offered. When 
you find a bird on her nest, it is of course much easier to tame that m- 
dividual that if you had to follow it about in the open, and wait for it to 
come within reach of a stick. By exercising extreme caution, and ap- 
proaching^ inch by inch, I have climbed a tree to the nest of a yellow- 
throated vireo. and at the first attempt handed the bird a meal-worm with 
my fingers At one time I had two house wrens, a yellow-throated vireo. 
a chipping sparrow and a flock of chickadees that would come to my 

hand." 

It would be possible— and also delightful— to fill a volume with 
citations of evidence to illustrate the quick acceptance of man's pro- 
tection by wild birds and mammals. Let me draw a few illustrations 
from my own wild neighbors. 

On Lake Agassiz, in the N. Y. Zoological Park, within 500 feet of my 
office in the Administration Building, a pair of wild wood-ducks made 



316 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 



their nest last spring, and have just finished rearing nine fine, health}' 
young birds. Whenever you see a woodrduck rise and fly in our Park, 
you may know that it is a wild bird. During the summer of 1912 a 
small flock of wild wood-ducks came every night to oiu* Wild-Fowl Pond, 
and spent the night there. 

A year ago, a covey of eleven quail appeared in the Park, and have 
persistently remained ever since. Last fall and winter they came at least 
twenty times to a spot within forty feet of the rear window of my office, 
in order to feed upon the wheat screenings that we placed there for 
them. 

When we first occupied the Zoological Park grounds, in 1899, there 
was not one wild rabbit in the whole 264 acres. Presently the species 
appeared, and rabbits began to hop about confidently, all over the place. 
In 1906, we estimated that there were about eighty individuals. Then 
the 'marauding cats began to come in, and they killed off the rabbits 
until not one was to be seen. Thereupon, we addressed ourselves to those 
cats, in more serious earnest than ever before. Now the cats have dis- 
appeared; and one day last spring, as I left my office at six o'clock, every- 
one else having previously gone, I almost stepped upon two half-grown 
bunnies that had been visiting on the front door-mat. 

When we were macadamizing the yards around the Elephant House, 
with a throng of workmen all about every day, a robin made its nest on 
the heavy channel-iron frame of one of the large elephant gates that 
swung to and fro nearly every day. 

In 1900 we planted a young pine tree in front of our temporary office 
building, within six feet of a main walk; and at once a pair of robins 
nested in it and reared young there. 




WILD CREATURES QUICKLY RESPOND TO FRIENDLY ADVANCES 
Chickadee and Chipmunk Tamed by Mr. Loring 



BRINGING BACK VANISHED BIRDS AND GAME 



317 




THE COLORADO OBJECT LESSON IN BRINGING BACK THE DUCKS 



Up in Putnam County, where for five years deer have been protected, 
the exhibitions that are given each year of the supreme confidence of 
protected deer Hterally astonish the natives. They are almost unafraid 
of man and his vehicles, his cattle and his horses, but of course they are 
unwilling to be handled. Strangers are astonished; but people who know 
something about the mental attitude of wild animals under protection 
know that it is the natural and inevitable result of real protection. 

At Mr. Frank vSeaman's summer home in the Catskills, the phoebe 
birds nest on the beams under the roof of the porch. At my summer 
home in the Berkshires, no sooner was our garage completed than a 
phoebe built her nest on the edge of the lintel over the side door; and 
another built on a drain-pipe over the kitchen door. 

Near Port Jervis, last year a wild ruffed grouse nested and reared a 
large brood in the garden of Mr. W. I. Mitchell, within two feet of the 
foundation of the house. 

On the Bull River in the wilds of British Columbia two trappers of 
my acquaintance, Mack Norboe and Charlie Smith, once formed a friend- 
ship with a wild weasel. In a very few visits, the weasel found that it was 
among friends, and the trappers' log cabin became its home. I have a 
photograph of it, taken while it posed on the door-sill. The trappers said 
that often when returning at nightfall from their trap-lines, the weasel 
would meet them a hundred yards away on the trail, and follow them 
back to the cabin. 

" Old Ben," the big sea-Hon who often landed on the wharf at Av^alon, 
Santa Catalina, to be fed on fish, was personalh'^ known to thousands of 
people. 

An Object Lesson in Protection. — A remarkable object lesson 
in the recognition of protection by wild ducks came under my notice in 



318 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

the pages of "Recreation Magazine" in June, 1903, when that publi- 
cation was edited by G. O. Shields. The article was entitled, — " A Haven 
of Refuge," and the place described well deserved the name. It is im- 
possible for me to impress upon the readers of this volume with sufficient 
force and clearness the splendid success that is easily attainable in en- 
couraging the return of the birds. The story of the Mosca "Haven of 
Refuge" was so well told by Mr. Charles C. Townsend in the publication 
referred to above, that I take pleasure in reproducing it entire. 

One mile north of the little village of Mosca, Colorado, in San Luis valley, lives 
the family of J. C. Gray. On the Gray ranch there is an artesian well which empties 
into a small pond about 100 feet square. This pond is never entirely frozen over and 
the water emptying therein is warm even during the coldest winter. 

Some five years ago, Mr. Gray secured a few wild-duck eggs, and hatched them under 
a hen. The little ducks were reared and fed on the little pond. The following spring 
they left the place, to return in the fall, bringing with them broods of young; also bring- 
ing other ducks to the home where protection was afforded them, and plenty of good 
feed was provided. Each year since, the ducks have scattered in the spring to mate and 
rear their families, returning again with greatly increased numbers in the fall, and again 
bringing strangers to the haven of refuge. 

I drove out to the ranch November 24, 1902, and found the little pond almost black 
with the birds, and was fortunate enough to secure a picture of a part of the pond while 
the ducks were thickly gathered thereon. Ice had formed around the edges, and this 
ice was covered with ducks. The water was also alive with others, which paid not the 
least attention to the party of strangers on the shore. 

From Mr. Gray I learned that there were some 600 ducks of various kinds on the 
pond at that time, though it was then early for them to seek winter quarters. Later in 
the year, he assured me, there would be betweeen 2,000 and 3,000 teal, mallards, canvas- 
backs, redheads and other varieties, all perfectly at home and fearless of danger. The 
family have habitually approached the pond from the house, which stands on the south 
side, and should any person appear on the north side of the pond the ducks immediately 
take fright and flight. Wheat was strewn on the ground and in the water, and the 
ducks waddled around us within a few inches of our feet to feed, paying not the least 
attention to us, or to the old house-dog which walked near. 

Six miles east of the ranch is San Luis lake, to which these ducks travel almost daily 
while the lake is open. When they are at the lake it is impossible to approach within 
gunshot of the then timid birds. Some unsympathetic boys and men have learned the 
habit of the birds, and place themselves in hiding along the course of flight to and from 
the lake. Many ducks are shot in this way, but woe to the person caught firing a gun 
on or near the home-pond. When away from home, the birds are as other wild-ducks 
and fail to recognize any members of the Gray family. While at home they follow the 
boys around the barn-yard, squawking for feed like so many tame ducks. 

This is the greatest sight I have ever witnessed, and one that I could not believe 
existed until I had seen it. Certainly it is worth travelling many miles to see, and no 
one, after seeing it, would care to shoot birds that, when kindly treated, make such 
charming pets. 

Since the above was published, the protected flocks of tame wild 
ducks have become one of the most interesting sights of Florida. At 
Palm Beach the tameness of the wild ducks when within their protected 
area, and their wildness outside of it, has been witnessed by thousands 
of visitors. 

The Saving of the Snowy Egret in the United States. — The 
time was when very many persons believed that the devastations of the 



BRINGING BACK VANISHED BIRDS AND GAME 319 

plume-hunters of Florida and the Gulf Coast would be so long continued 
and so persistently followed up to the logical conclusion that both species 
of plume-furnishing egrets would disappear from the avifauna of the 
United States. This expectation gave rise to feelings of resentment, 
indignation and despair. 

It happened, however, that almost at the last moment a solitary 
individual set on foot an enterprise calculated to preserve the snowy 
egret (which is the smaller of the two species involved), from final 
extermination. The splendid success that has attended the efforts of Mr. 
Edward A. Mcllhenny, of Avery Island, Louisiana, is entitled not only 
to admiration and praise, but also to the higher tribute of practical 
imitation. Mr. Mcllhenny is, first of all, a lover of birds, and a human- 
itarian. He has traveled widely throughout the continent of North 
America and elsewhere, and has seen much of wild life and man's influence 
upon it. To-day his highest ambition is to create for the benefit of the 
Present, and as a heritage to Posterity, a mid-continental chain of great 
bird refuges, in which migrating wild fowl and birds of all other species 
may find resting-places and refuges during their migrations, and pro- 
tected feeding-grounds in winter. In this grand enterprise, the con- 
summation of which is now in progress, Mr. Mcllhenny is associated with 
Mr. Charles Willis Ward, joint donor of the splendid Ward-Mcllhenny 
Bird Preserve of 13,000 acres, which recently was presented to the State 
of Louisiana by its former owners. 

The egret and heron preserve, however, is Mr. Mcllhenny 's in- 
dividual enterprise, and really furnished the motif of the larger move- 
ment. Of its inception and development, he has kindly furnished me 
the following account, accompanied by many beautiful photographs of 
egrets breeding in sanctuary, one of which appears on page 27. 

In some recent publications I have seen statements to the effect that you believed 
the egrets were nearing extinction, owing to the persecution of plume hunters, so I know 
that you will be interested in the enclosed photographs, which were taken in my heron 
rookery, situated within 100 yards of my factory, where I am now sitting dictating 
this letter. 

This rookery was started by me in 1896, because I saw at that time that the herons 
of Louisiana were being rapidly exterminated by plume hunters. IVIy thought was that 
the way to preserve them would be to start an artificial rookery of them where they 
could be thoroughly protected. With this end in view I built a small pond, taking in a 
wet space that contained a few willows and other shrubs which grow in wet places. 

In a large cage in this pond, I raised some snowy herons. After keeping the birds in 
confinement for something over six montlis I turned them loose, hoping that they would 
come back the next season, as they were perfectly tame and were used to seeing people. 
I was rewarded the next season by four of the birds returning, and nesting in tlie willows 
in the pond. This was the start of a rookery that now covers 35 acres, and contains 
more than twenty thousand pairs of nesting birds, embracing not only the egrets but 
all the species of herons found in Louisiana, besides many other water birds. 

With a view to carrying on the preservation of our birds on a larger scale, Mr. Chas. 
W. Ward and I have recently donated to the State of Louisiana 13,000 acres of what I 
consider to be tlie finest wild fowl feeding ground on the Louisiana coast, as it contains 
the only gravel beach for 50 miles, and all of the geese within that space come daily 
to this beach for gravel. This territory also ]:)roduces a great amount of natural food for 
geese and ducks. 



320 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Saving the Gulls and Terns. — But for the vigorous and long- 
continued efforts of the Audubon Societies, I think our coasts would by 
this time have been swept clean of the gulls and terns that now adorn it. 
Twenty years ago the milliners were determined to have them all. The 
fight for them was long, and hotly contested, but the Audubon Societies 
won. It was a great victory, and has yielded results of great value to 
the country at large. And yet, it was only a small number of persons 
who furnished the money and made the fight which inured to the benefit 
of the millions of American people. Hereafter, whenever you see an 
American gull or tern, remind yourself that it was saved to the nation 
by "the Audubon people." 

In times of grave emergency, such as fire, war and scarcity of food, 
the wild creatures forget their fear of man, and many times actually 
surrender themselves to his mercy and protection. At such times, hard 
is the heart and low is the code of manly honor that does not respond in 
a manner becoming a superior species. 

The inost pathetic wild-animal situation ever seen in the United 
States on a large scale is that which for six winters in succession forced 
several thousand starving elk into the settlement of Jackson Hole, 
Wyoming, in quest of food at the hands of their natural enemies. The 
elk lost all fear, partly because they were not attacked, and they sur- 
rounded the log-enclosed haystacks, barns and houses, mutely begging 
for food. Previous to the winter of 1911, thousands of weak calves and 
cows perished around the haystacks. Mr. S. N. Leek's wonderftd 
pictures tell a thrilling but very sad story. 

To the everlasting honor of the people of Jackson Hole, be it recorded 
that they rose like Men to the occasion that confronted them. In 1909 
they gave to the elk herds all the hay that their domestic stock could 
spare, not pausing to ascertain whether they ever would be reimbursed 
for it. They just handed it out ! The famishing animals literally mobbed 
the hay-wagons. To-day the national government has the situation in 
hand. 

In times of peace and plenty, the people of Jackson Hole take their 
toll of the elk herds, but their example during starvation periods is to be 
commended to all men. 

A Slaughter of Restored Game. — The case of the chamois in 
Switzerland teaches the world a valuable lesson in how not to slaughter 
game that has come back to its haunts through protected breeding. 

A few years ago, one of the provinces of Switzerland took note of the 
fact that its once-abundant stock of chamois was almost extinct, and 
enacted a law by which the remnant was absolutely protected for a long 
period. During those years of protection, the animals bred and multi- 
plied, until finally the original number was almost restored. 

Then, — as always in such cases, — there arose a strong demand for 
an open season; and eventually the government yielded to the pressure 
of the hunters, and fixed a date whereon an open season should begin. 



322 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

During the period preceding that fatal date, the living chamois, grown 
half tame by years of immunity from the guns, were all carefully located 
and marked down by those who intended to hunt them. At daybreak 
on the fatal day, the onset began. Guns and hunters were everywhere, 
and the mountains resounded with the fusillade. Hundreds of chamois 
were slain, by hundreds of hunters; and by the close of that fatal "open 
season" the species was more nearly exterminated throughout that 
region than ever before. Once more those mountains were nice and barren 
of game. 

Let that bloody and disgracefiil episode serve as a warning to Ameri- 
cans who are tempted to demand an open season on game that has bred 
back from the verge of extinction. Particularly do we commend it to 
the notice of the people of Colorado who even now are demanding an 
open season on the preserved mountain sheep of that state. The 
granting of such an open season would be a brutal outrage. Those 
sheep are now so tame and unsuspicious that the killing of them would 
be cold-blooded murder! 

The Logical Conclusion. — Within reasonable limits, any partly- 
destroyed wild species can be increased and brought back by giving 
absolute protection from harassment and slaughter. When a species is 
struggling to recuperate, it deserves to be left entirely unmolested until 
it is once more on safe ground. 

Every breeding wild animal craves seclusion and entire immunity 
from excitement and all forms of molestation. Nature simply demands 
this as her unassailable right. It is my firm belief that any wild species 
will breed in captivity whenever its members are given a degree of 
seclusion that they deem satisfactory. 

With species that have not been shot down to a point entirely too 
low, adequate protection generously long in duration will bring back 
their numbers. If the people of the United States so willed it, we could 
have wild white-tailed deer in every state and in every county (save 
city counties) between the Atlantic and the Rocky Mountains. We could 
easily have one thousand bob white quail for every one now living. We 
could have squirrels in every grove, and songbirds by the million, — merely 
by protecting them from slaughter and molestation. From Ohio to the 
great plains, the pinnated grouse could be made far more common than 
crows and blackbirds. 

Inasmuch as all this is true, — and no one with information will dis- 
pute it for a moment, — is it not folly to seek to supplant our own splendid 
native species of game birds {that we never yet have decently protected!) 
with foreign species ? Let the American people answer this question with 
"Yes" or "No." 

The methods by which our non-game birds can be encouraged and 
brought back are very simple: Protect them, put up shelters for them, 
give them nest-boxes in abundance, protect them from cats, dogs, and all 
other forms of destruction, and feed those that need to be fed. I should 
think that every boy living in the country would find keen pleasure in 



BRINGING BACK VANISHED BIRDS AND GAME 323 

making and erecting nest-boxes for martins, wrens, and squirrels; in 
putting up straw teepees in winter for the quail, in feeding the quail, 
and in nailing to the trees chunks of suet and fat pork every winter for the 
woodpeckers, nuthatches, and other winter residents. 

Will any person now on this earth live long enough to see the present 
all-pervading and devilish spirit of slaughter so replaced by the love of 
wild creatures and the true spirit of conservation that it will be as rare 
as it now is common? 

But let no one think for a moment that any vanishing species can at 
any time be brought back; for that would be a grave error. The point 
is always reached, by every such species, that the survivors are too few 
to cope with circumstances, and recovery is impossible. The heath hen 
could not be brought back, neither could the passenger pigeon. The 
whooping crane, the sage grouse, the trumpeter swan, the wild turkey, 
and the upland plover never will come back to us, and nothing that we 
can do ever will bring them back. Circumstances are against those 
species, — and I fear against many others also. Thanks to the fact that 
the American bison breeds well in captivity, we have saved that species 
from complete extinction, but our antelope seems to be doomed. 

It is because of the alarming condition of our best wild life that quick 
action and strong action is vitally necessary. We are sleeping on our 
possibilities. 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

INTRODUCED SPECIES THAT HAVE BEEN BENEFICIAL 

Man has made numerous experiments in the transplantation of wild 
species of mammals and birds from one country, or continent, to another. 
About one-half these efiforts have been beneficial, and the other half have 
resulted disastrously. 

The transplantation of any wild-animal species is a leap in the dark. 
On general principles it is dangerous to meddle with the laws of Nature, 
and attempt to improve upon the code of the wilderness. Our best 
wisdom in such matters may easily prove to be short-sighted folly. The 
trouble lies in the fact that concerning transplantation it is impossible 
jor us to know beforehand all the conditions that will affect it, or that it will 
effect, and how it will work out. In its own home a species may seem not 
only harmless, but actually beneficial to man. We do not know, and we 
can not know, all the influences that keep it in check, and that mould its 
character. We do not know, and we can not know without a trial, how 
new environment will affect it, and what new traits of character it will 
develop under radically different conditions. The gentle dove of Europe 
may become the tyrant dove of Cathay. The Repressed Rabbit of the 
Old World becomes in Australia the Uncontrollable Rabbit, a devastator 
and a pest of pests. 

No wild species should be transplanted and set free in a wild state to 
stock new regions without consulting men of wisdom, and following their 
advice. It is now against the laws of the United States to introduce and 
acclimatize in a wild state, anywhere in the United States, any wild-bird 
species without the approval of the Department of Agriculture. The 
law is a wise one. Furthermore, the same principle should apply to birds 
that it is proposed to transplant from one portion of the United States 
into another, especially when the two are widely separated. 

On this point, I once learned a valuable lesson, which may well point 
my present moral. Incidentally, also, it was a narrow escape for me! 

A gentlemen of my acquaintance, who admires the European magpie, 
and is well aware of its acceptable residence in various countries in Eu- 
rope, once requested my cooperation in securing and acclimatizing at 
his country estate a number of birds of that species. As in duty bound, 
I laid the matter before our Department of Agriculture, and asked for 
an opinion. The Department replied, in efifect, "Why import a foreign 
magpie when we have in the West a species of our own quite as hand- 
some, and which could more easily be transplanted?" 

The point seemed well taken. Now, I had seen much of the American 



BENEFICIAL INTRODUCED SPECIES 325 

magpie in its wild home, — the Rocky Mountains, and the western border 
of the Great Plains, — and I thought I was acquainted with it. I knew 
that a few complaints against it had been made, but they had seemed 
to me very trivial. To me our magpie seemed to have a generally unob- 
jectionable record. 

Fortunately for me, I wrote to Mr. Hershey, Assistant Curator of 
Ornithology in the Colorado State Museum, for assistance in procuring 
fifty birds, for transplanation to the State of New York. Mr. Hershey 
replied that if I really wished the birds for acclimatization, he would 
gladly procure them for me; but he said that in the thickly-settled farming 
communities of Colorado, the magpie is now regarded as a pest. It 
devours the eggs and nestlings of other wild birds, and not only that, it 
destroys so many eggs of domestic poultry that many farmers are com- 
pelled to keep their egg-laying hens shut up in wire enclosures ! 

Now, this condition happened to be entirely unknown to me, because 
I never had seen the American magpie in action in a farming community! 
Of course the proposed experiment was promptly abandoned, but it is 
embarrassing to think how near I came to making a mistake. Even if 
the magpies had been transplanted and had become a nuisance in this 
state, they could easily have been exterminated b}^ shooting; but the 
memory of the error would have been humiliating to the party of the 
first part. 

The Old World Pheasa^'ts in America. — In 1881 the first Chinese 
ring-necked pheasants were introduced into the United States, twelve 
miles below Portland, Oregon; twelve males and three females. The 
next year, Oregon gave pheasants a five-year close season. A little later, 
the golden and silver pheasants of China were introduced, and all three 
species throve mightily, on the Pacific Coast, in Oregon, Washington 
and western British Columbia. In 1900, the sportsmen of Portland 
and Vancouver were shooting cock golden pheasants according to law. 

The success of Chinese and Japanese pheasants on the Pacific Coast 
soon led to experiments in the more progressive states, at state expense. 
State pheasant hatcheries have been established in Massachusetts, 
Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa and 
California. 

In many localities, the old-world pheasants have come to stay. The 
rise and progress of the ring-neck in western New York has already been 
noted. It came about merely through protection. That protection was 
protection in fact, not the false "protection" that shoots on the sly. It 
is the irony of fate that full protection should be accorded a foreign bird, 
in order that it may multiply and possess the land, while the same kind 
of protection is refused the native bob white, and it is now almost a dead 
species, so far as this state is concerned. 

In looking about for grievances against the ring-necked and English 
pheasant, some persons ha^'e claimed that in winter these birds are 
"budders," which means that they harmfully strip trees and bushes of 
the buds that those bushes will surely need in their spring opening. On 



32(i OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

that point Dr. Joseph Kalbfus, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Game 
Commission, sent out a circular letter of inquiry, in response to which 
he received many statements. With but one exception, all the testimony 
received was to the effect that pheasants are not bud-eaters, and that 
generally the charge is unfounded. 

The introduction of old-world pheasants, and the attempted intro- 
duction of the Hungarian partridge, are efforts designed first of all to 
furnish sportsmen something to shoot, and incidentally to provide a new 
food supply for the table. The people of this country are not starving, 
nor are they even very hungry for the meat of strange birds; but as a 
food -producer, the pheasant is all right. 

It disgusts me to the core, however, to see states that wantonly and 
wickedly, through sheer apathy and lack of business enterprise, have 
allowed the quail, the heath hen, the pinnated grouse and the ruffed 
grouse to become almost exterminated by extravagant and foolish 
shooters, now putting forth wonderfully diligent efforts and spending 
money without end, in introducing /omgw species! Many men actually 
take the ground that our game "can't live" in its own country any 
longer ; but only the ignorant and the unthinking will say so ! Give our 
game birds decent, sensible, actual protection, stop their being slaughtered 
far faster than they breed, and they will live anywhere in their own native 
haunts! But where is there one species of upland game bird in America 
that has been sensibly and adequately protected? From Portland, 
Maine, to Portland, Oregon there is not one, — not a single locality in which 
protection from shooting has been sensible, or just, or adequate. 

We have universally given our American upland game birds an 
unfair deal, and now we are adding insult to slaughter by bringing in 
foreign game birds to replace them— because our birds "can't live" 
before five million shot-guns! 

Our American game birds CAN live, anywhere in the haunts where 
nature placed them that are not to-day actually occupied by cities and 
towns! Give me the making of the laws, and I will make the prairie 
chicken and quail as numerous throughout the northern states east of 
the Great Plains as domestic chickens are outside the regular poultry 
farms. There is only one reason why there are not ten million quail 
in the state of New York to-day, — one for each human inhabitant, — and 
that reason is the infernal greed and selfishness of the men who have 
almost exterminated our quail by over-shooting. Don't talk to me about 
the ' ' hard winters ' ' killing off our quail ! It is the hard cheek of the men 
who shoot them when they ought to let them alone. 

The State of Iowa coiild support 500,000 prairie chickens and never 
miss the waste grain that they would glean in the fields; but now the 
prairie chicken is practically extinct in Iowa, only a few scattered speci- 
mens remaining as ' last survivors " in some of the northern counties. 
The migration of those birds that unexpectedly came down from the 
north last winter was like the fall of a meteor, — only the birds promptly 
faded away again. Why should New York, New Jersey and Massachu^ 



BENEFICIAL INTRODUCED SPECIES 327 

setts exterminate the heath hen and coddle the rinj^-neeked pheasant 
and the Hungarian partridge? 

The introduction of the old-world pheasants interests me very little. 
Every one that I see is a painful reminder of our slaughtered quail and 
grouse,^ — the birds that never have had a square deal from the American 
people! Thus far the introduction of the Hungarian partridge has not 
been successful, anywhere. Connecticut, Missouri, New Jersey and I 
think other states have tried this, and failed. The failure of that 
species brings no sorrow to me. I prefer our own game birds; and if the 
American people will not conserve those properly and decently they 
deserve to have no game birds. 

The European Red Deer in New Zealand. — Occasionally a game- 
less land makes a ten-strike by introducing a foreign game animal that 
does no harm, and becomes of great value. The greatest success ever 
made in the transplantation of game animals has been in New Zealand. 

Originally, New Zealand possessed no large animals, and no "big- 
game." When Nature passed around the deer, antelopes, sheep, goats, 
wild cattle and bears, New Zealand failed to receive her share. For 
centuries her splendid forests, her grand mountains and picturesque 
valleys remained untenanted by big game. 

In 1864, the Prince Consort of England caused seven head of European 
red deer to be taken from the royal park at Windsor, and sent to Christ- 
church, New Zealand. Only three of the animals survived the long 
voyage ; a buck and two does. For several weeks the two were kept in a 
barn in Christchurch, where they served no good purpose, and were no^ 
likely to live long or be happy. Finally some one said, "Let's set them 
free in the mountains!" 

The idea was adopted. The three animals were hauled an uncertain 
number of miles into the interior mountains and set free. 

They promptly settled down in their new home. They began to 
breed, and now on the North Island there are probably five thousand 
European red deer, every one of which has descended directly from the 
famous three ! And here is the strangest part of the story : 

The red deer of the North Island represent the greatest case of in- 
and-in breeding of wild animals on record. Accordmg to the experience 
of the world in the breeding of domestic cattle {not horses), we should 
expect physical deterioration, the development of diseases, and disaster. 
On the contrary, the usual evil results of in-breeding in domestic cattle 
have been totally absen'. . The red deer of New Zealand are to-day physically 
larger and more robust animals, with longer and heavier antlers, and longer 
hair, than any of the red deer of Europe vest of Germany! 

Red deer have been introduced practically all over New Zealand, and 
the total number now in the Islands must be somewhere near fortv 
thousand. The sportsmen of that country have grand sport, and take 
many splendid trophies. That transplantation has been a very great 
success. Incidentally, the case of the in-bred deer of the North Island, 



328 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

taken along with other cases of which we know, estabhshes a new and 
important principle in evolution. It is this : 

When healthy wild animals are established in a state of nature, either 
absolutely free, or confined in preserves so large that they roam at will, seek 
the food of nature and take care of themselves, in-and-in breeding produces 
no ill effects, and ceases to be a factor. The animals develop in physical 
perfection according to the climate and their food supply; and the introduc- 
tion of new blood is not necessary. 

The Fallow Deer on the Island of Lambay. — In the Irish vSea, 
a few miles from the southeast coast of Ireland, is the Island of Lambay, 
owned by Cecil Baring, Esq. The island is precisely one square mile in 
area, and some of its sea frontage terminates in perpendicular cliffs. 
In many ways the island is of unusual interest to zoologists, and its fauna 
has been well set forth by Mr. Baring. 

In the year 1892 three fallow deer (Dama vtilgaris) a buck and two 
does, were transplanted from a park on the Irish mainland to Lambay, 
and there set free. From that slender stock has sprung a large herd, 
which, but for the many deer that have been purposely shot, and the really 
considerable number that have been killed by going over the cliffs in 
stormy weather, the progeny of the original three would to-day number 
several hundred head. No new blood has been introduced, and no deer 
have died of disease. Even counting out the losses by the rifle and by 
accidental death, the herd to-day numbers more than one hundred head. 

Mr. Baring declares that neither he nor his gamekeeper have ever 
been able to discover any deterioration in the deer of Lambay, either in 
size, weight, size of antlers, fertility or general physical stamina. The 
deterioration through disease, especially tuberculosis, that always is 
dreaded and often observed in closely in-bred domestic cattle, has been 
totally absent. 

In looking about for wild species that have been transplanted, and 
that have thriven and become beneficial to man, there seems to be mighty 
little game in sight ! The vast majority belong in the next chapter. We 
will venture to mention the bob white quail that were introduced into 
Utah in 1871, into Idaho in 1875, and the California valley quail in Wash- 
ington in 1857. Wherever these efforts have succeeded, the results have 
been beneficial to man. 

In 1879 a well-organized effort was made to introduce European 
quail into several of the New England and Middle States, — to take the 
place of the bob white, we may suppose, — the bird that "can't stand the 
winters!" About three thousand birds were distributed and set free, — 
and went down and out, just as might have been expected. During the 
past twenty years it is safe to say that not less than $5500,000 have been 
expended in the northern states, and particularly in the northeastern 
states, in importing live quail from Kansas, the Indian Territory, Okla- 
homa, Texas, the Carolinas and other southern states, for restocking 
areas from which the northern bob white had been exterminated by 
foolish over-shooting ! I think that fully nine-tenths of these efforts have 



BENEFICIAL INTRODUCED SPECIES 329 

ended in total failure. The quail could not survive in tneir strange 
environinent. I cannot recall a single instance in which restocking 
northern covers with southern quail has been a success. 

These is no royal road to the restoration of an exterminated bird 
species. Where the native seed still exists, by long labor and travail, 
thorough protection and a mighty long close season, it can be encouraged 
to breed back and return; but it is an evolution that can not be hurried 
in the least. Protect Nature, and leave the rest to her. 

With mammals, the case is different. It is possible to restock depleted 
areas, provided Time is recognized as a dominant factor. I can cite two 
interesting cases by way of illustration, but this subject will form an- 
other chapter. 

In the transplantation of fishes, conditions are widely different, and 
many notable successes have been achieved. 

One of the greatest hits ever made by the United States Bureau of Fisheries in the 
planting of fish in new locahties was the introduction of the striped bass or rock-fish 
{RoccHS lineatus) of our Atlantic coast, into the coast waters of California. In 1879, 
135 live fish were deposited in Karquines Strait, at Martinez, and in 1882, 300 more were 
planted in Suisun Bay, near the first locality chosen. 

Twelve years after the first planting in San Francisco Bay, the markets of San Fran- 
cisco handled 149,997 pounds of striped bass. At that time the average weight for a 
whole year was eleven pounds, and the average price was ten cents per pound. Fish 
weighing as high as forty-nine pounds have been taken, and there are reasons for the 
belief that eventually the fish of California will attain as great weight as those of the 
Atlantic and the Gulf. 

The San Franisco markets now sell, annually, about one and one half million pounds 
of striped bass. This fish has taken its place among anglers as one of the game fishes 
of the California coast, and affords fine sport. Strange to say, however, it has not yet 
spread beyond the shores of California. 

Regarding this species, the records of the United States Bureau of Fisheries are of 
interest. In 1897, the California markets handled 2,949,642 pounds, worth $225,527.— 
(American Natural History.) 

Nowhere else in the world, we venture to say, were such extensive, 
costly and persistent efforts put forth in the transplantation of any wild 
foreign species as the old U. S. Fish Commission, under Prof. Spencer F. 
Baird, put forth in the introduction of the German carp into the fresh 
water ponds, lakes and rivers of the United States. It was held that 
because the carp could live and thrive in waters bottomed with mud, 
that species would be a boon to all inland regions where bodies of water, 
or streams, were scarce and dear. Although the carp is not the best fish 
in the world for the table, it seemed that the dwellers in the prairie and 
great plains regions would find it far better than bullheads, or no fish at 
all, — which are about the same thing. 

By means of special fish cars, sent literally all over the United States, 
at a great total expense, live carp, hatched in the ponds near the Wash- 
ington Monument were distributed to all applicants. The German carp 
spread far and wide; but to-day I think the fish has about as many 
enemies as friends. In some places, strong objections have been filed to 
the manner in which carp stir up the mud at the bottom of ponds and 
small lakes, greatly to the detriment of all the native fishes found therein. 



CHAPTER XXXV 
INTRODUCED SPECIES THAT HAVE BECOME PESTS 

The man who successfully transplants or "introduces" into a new 
habitat any persistent species of living thing, assumes a very grave 
responsibility. Every introduced species is doubtful gravel until panned 
out. The enormous losses that have been inflicted upon the world through 
the perpetuation of follies with wild vertebrates and insects would, if 
added together, be enough to purchase a principality. The most aggra- 
vating feature of these follies in transplantation is that never yet have 
they been made severely punishable. We are just as careless and easy- 
going on this point as we were about the government of the Yellowstone 
Park in the days when Howell and other poachers destroyed our first 
national bison herd, and when caught red-handed — as Howell was, 
skinning seven Park bison cows, — could not he punished j or it, because there 
was no penalty prescribed by any Ian. 

To-day, there is a way in which any revengeful person could inflict 
enormous damage on the entire South, at no cost to himself, involve 
those states in enormous losses and the expenditure of vast sums of money, 
yet go absolutely unpunished! 

The Gypsy Moth is a case in point. This winged calamity was im- 
ported at Maiden, Massachusetts, near Boston, by a French entomologist, 
Mr. Leopold Trouvelot, in 1868 or '69. History records the fact that the 
man of science did not purposely set free the pest. He was endeavorine 
with live specimens to find a moth that would produce a cocoon of com- 
mercial value to America; and a sudden gust of wind blew out of his study, 
through an open window, his living and breeding specimens of the gypsy 
moth. The moth itself is not bad to look at, but its larvae is a great, 
overgrown brute, with an appetite like a hog. Immediately Mr. Trouve- 
lot sought to recover his specimens, and when he failed to find them all, 
like a man of real honor, he notified the State authorities of the accident. 
Every effort was made to recover all the specimens, bat enough escaped 
to produce progeny that soon became a scourge to the trees of Massachu- 
setts. The method of the big, nasty-looking mottled-brown caterpillar 
was very simple. It devoured the entire foliage of every tree that grew 
in its sphere of influence. 

The gypsy moth spread with alarming rapidity and persistence. In 
course of time the state authorities of Massachuestts were forced to 
begin a relentless war upon it, by poisonous sprays and by fire. It was 
awful! Up to this date (1912) the New England states and the United 
States Government service have expended in fighting this pest about 
$7,680,000! 



INTRODUCED SPECIES THAT BECOME PESTS 333 

The spread of this pest has been retarded, but the gypsy moth never 
will be wholly stamped out. To-day it exists in Rhode Island, Connecti- 
cut and New Hampshire, and it is due to reach New York at an early 
date. It is steadily spreading in three directions from Boston, its original 
point of departure, and when it strikes the State of New York, we, too, 
will begin to pay dearly for the Trouvelot experiment. It is said that 
General S. C. Lawrence, of Medford, Massachusetts, has spent $75,000 
in trying to protect his trees from the ravages of this scourge. 

The Rabbit Plague in Australia and New Zeal.^nd. — The rabbit 
curse upon Australia and New Zealand is so well known as to require 
Httle comment. In this case the introduction was deliberate. In the 
days when the sheep industr\ was most prosperous, a patriotic gentleman 
conceived the idea that the introduction of the rabbit, and its establish- 
ment as a wild animal, would be a good thing. He reasoned that it would 
furnish a good food supplv, that it would furnish sport, and being unable 
to harm any other creature of flesh and blood it was therefore harmless. 
Accordingly, three pairs of rabbits were imported and set free. 

In a short time, the immense number of rabbits that began to over- 
run the country furnished food for reflection, as well as for the table. 
A very simple calculation brought out the startling information that, 
under perfectly favorable conditions, a single pair of rabbits could in 
three years' time produce progeny amounting to 13,718,000 individuals. 
Ever since that time, in discussing the rabbits of Australia it has been 
necessary to speak in millions. 

"The inhabitants of the colony," says Dr. Richard I.ydekker, "soon 
found that the rabbits were a plague, for they devoured the grass, which 
was needed for the sheep, the bark of trees, and every kind of fruit and 
vegetable, until the prospects of the colony became a very serious matter, 
and ruin seemed inevitable. In New South Wales upwards of 15,000,000 
rabbits skins have been exported in a single year; while in thirteen years 
ending with 1889 no less than 39,000,000 were accounted for in Victoria 
alone. 

"To prevent the increase of these rodents, the introduction of weasels, 
stoats, mongooses, etc., has been tried; but it has been found that those 
carnivores neglected the rabbits and took to feeding on poultry, and thus 
became as great a nuisance as the animals they were intended to destroy. 
The attempt to kill them off by the introduction of an epidemic di.sease 
has also failed. In order to protect such portions of the country as are 
still free from rabbits, fences of wire netting have been erected; one of 
these fences erected by the Government of Victoria extending for a dis- 
tance of upwards of one hundred and fifty geograj^hical miles. In New 
Zealand, where the rabbit has been introduced little more than twenty 
years, its increase has been so enormous, and the destruction it inflicts 
so great, that in some districts it has actually been a question whether 
the colonists should not vacate the country rather than attempt to fight 
against the j^lague. The average number of rabbit skins exported from 
New Zealand is now twelve millions." — (Royal Natural History.) 



332 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

The Fox Pest in Australia. — And now unfortunate Australia has a 
new pest, also acquired by importation of an alien species. It is the Euro- 
pean fox (Vulpes vulpes). The only redeeming feature about this fresh 
calamity is found in the fact that the species was not deliberately intro- 
duced into Australia for the benefit of the local fauna. Mr. O. W. Rosen- 
hain, of Melbourne, informs ine (1912) that about thirty years ago the 
Hunt Club brought to Australia about twenty foxes, for the promotion 
of the noble sport of fox hunting. In some untoward manner, the most 
of those animals escaped. They survived, multiplied, and have provided 
New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia with a fox pest of the 
first rank. 

The destruction of wild bird life and poultry has become so serious 
that Australia now is making vigorous efforts to exterminate the pest. 
The govermnent pays ten shillings bounty on fox scalps, besides which 
each prime fox skin is worth from four to five dollars. It is hoped that 
these coinbined values will eliminate the fox pest. 

Regarding foxes in Australia, Mr. W. H. D. LeSouef has this to sa}'- 
in his extremely interesting and valuable book, "Wild Life in Australia," 
page 146: 

"We found that foxes were ' unfortunately plentiful in this district, 
and in a hollow log that served to shelter some cubs were noticed the 
remains of ducks, fowls, rabbits, lambs, bandicoots and snakes; so they 
evidently vary their fare, snakes even not coming amiss. They also 
sneak on wild ducks that are nesting by the edge of the water among the 
rushes and tussocky grass, and catch quail also, especially sitting birds. 
These animals are, and always will he, a great source of trouble in the 
thickly timbered country and stony ranges, and will gradually, like the 
rabbit, extend all over Australia. They are evidently not contented with 
ground game only, as Mr. A. F. Kelly, of Barwonleigh, in Victoria, 
states: "When riding past a bull-oak tree about twenty-five feet high, 
with either a magpie's or crow's nest on top, I noticed the nest looked 
very bulky, and had something red in it. On going nearer I saw a large 
fox coiled up in it!" 

The Mongoose. — Circumstances alter cases, and a change of envi- 
ronment sometimes works marvelous changes in the character of an 
animal species. Now, why should not the gray Indian mongoose (form- 
erly called the ichneumon, (Ilerpestes griseus) destroy poultry in India, 
as it does elsewhere? There is poultry in ^^^snty to be destroyed, but 
" Rikki-Tikki-Tavi " elects to specialize -;. ...c killing of rats, and cobras, 
and other snakes. 

In his own sphere of influence, — India and the orient, — the mongoose 
is a fairly decent citizen, and he fits into the time-worn econoiny of that 
region. As a destroyer of the thrice-anathema domestic rat, he has no 
equal in. the domain of flesh and blood. His temper is so fierce that one 
"pet" mongoose has been known to kill a full grown male giant bustard, 
and put a greyhound to flight. 

In an evil moment (1872) Mr. W. B. Espeut conceived the idea that 



INTRODUCED SPECIES THAT BECOME PESTS 333 

it would be a good thing to introduce mongooses to the rats of Barbadoes 
and Jamaica that were pestering the cane-fields to an annoying extent. 
It was .done. The mongooses attacked the rats, cleaned them out, mul- 
tiplied, and then looked about for more worlds to conquer, snakes and 
lizards were few; but they cheerfully killed and devoured all there were. 
Then, being continuously hungry, they attacked the wild birds and 
poultr}', indiscriminately, and with their usual vigor. I have been told 
that in Barbadoes "they cleaned out every living thing that they could 
catch and kill, and then they attacked the sugar-cane." The last count 
in the indictment may seem hard to believe; but it is a fact that the 
Indian mongoose often resorts to fruit and vegetable food. 

In Jamaica, at the end of the rat-killing period, the planters joy- 
fully estimated that the labors of Herpestes had saved between £500,000 
and £750,000 to the industries of that island. That was before the 
slaughter of wild birds and poultry began. I am told that up to date the 
damage done by the mongoose far exceeds the value of the benefit it once 
conferred, but the total has not been computed. 

Up to this date, the mongoose has invaded and become a destructive 
pest in Barbadoes, Jamaica, Cuba, St. Vincent, vSt. Lucia, Trinidad, 
Nevis, Fiji and all the larger islands of the Hawaiian group. It would 
require many pages to contain a full account of each introduction, 
awakening, reckoning of damages and payment of bounties for destruc- 
tion that the fiendish mongoose has wrought out wherever it has been 
introduced. The progress of the pest is everywhere the same, — sweeping 
destruction of rats, snakes, wild birds, small mammals, and finally 
poultry and vegetables. 

Every country that now is without the mongoo.se will do well to shut 
and guard diligently all the doors by which it might be introduced. 

Throughout its range in the western hemisphere, the inongoose is a 
pest; and the Biological Survey of the Department of Agriculture has 
done well in securing the enactment of a law peremptorily prohibiting 
the importation of any animals of that species into the United States or 
any of its colonies. The fierce temper, indomitable courage and vaulting 
appetite of the mongoose would make its actual introduction in any of 
the warm portions of the United States a horrible calamity. In the 
southern states, and all along the Pacific slope clear up to Seattle, it could 
live, thrive and multiply; and the slaughter that it could and would 
inflict upon our wild birds generally, especialh all those that nest and 
live on the ground, saying nothing of the slaughter of poultry, would 
drive the American people crazy. 

Fancy an animal with the murderous ferocity of a mink, the agility 
of a squirrel, the penetration of a ferret and the cunning of a rat, infesting 
the thickets and barnyards of this country. The mongoose can live 
wherever a rat can live, provided it can get a fair amount of animal food. 
Not for $1,000,000 could any one of the southern or Pacific states afford 
to have a pair of these little gray fiends imported and set free. If such a 
calamity ever occurs, all wheels should stop, and every habitant should 



334 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

turn out and hunt for the animals until they are found and pulverized. 
No matter if it should require a thousand men and $100,000, find them! 
If not found, the cost to the state will soon be a million a year, with no 
ending. 

In spite of the vigilance of our custom house officers, every now and 
then a Hindoo from some foreign vessel sneaks into the country with a 
pet mongoose (and they do make great pets!) inside his shirt, or in the 
bottom of a bag of clothing. Of course, whenever the Department of 
Agriculture discovers any of these surreptitious animals, they are at 
once confiscated, and either killed or sent to a public zoological park for 
safe-keeping. In New York, the director of the Zoological Park is so 
genuinely concerned about the possibility of the escape of a female mon- 
goose that he has issued two standing orders : All live mongooses offered 
to us shall at once be purchased, and every female animal shall im- 
mediately be chloroformed. 

If Herpestes griseus ever breaks loose in the United States, the crime 
shall not justly be chargeable to us. 

The English Sparrow. — In the United States, the English sparrow 
is a national sorrow, almost too great to be endured. It is a bird of plain 
plumage, low tastes, impudent disposition and persistent fertility. Con- 
tinually does it crowd out its betters, or pugnaciously drive them away, 
and except on very rare occasions it eats neither insects nor weed seeds. 
It has no song, and in habits it is a bird of the street and the gutter. _ There 
is not one good reason why it should exist in this country. If it were 
out of the way, our native insect-eaters of song and beauty could return 
to our lawns and orchards. The English sparrow is a nuisance and a pest, 
and if it could be returned to the land of its nativity we would gain much. 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

NATIONAL AND STATE GAME PRESERVES, AND BIRD 

REFUGES 

Out West, there is said to be a "feeling" that game and forest con- 
servation has "gone far enough." In Montana, particularly, the Na- 
tional Wool-Growers' Association has for some time been firmly con- 
vinced that "the time has come to call a halt." Oh, yes! A halt on the 
conservation of game and forests; but not on the free grazing of sheep 
on the public domain. No, not even while those same sheep are busily 
growing wool that is so fearfully and wonderfully conserved by a sky- 
high tariff that the truly poor Americans are forced to wear garments 
made of shoddy because they cannot afford to buy clothing made of wool ! 
(This is the testimony of a responsible clothing merchant, in 1912.) 

We can readily understand the new hue and cry against conservation 
that the sheep men now are raising. Of course they are against all new 
game and forest reserves, — unless the woolly hordes are given the right 
to graze in them ! 

Many men of the Great West, — the West beyond the Great Plains, — 
are afflicted with a desire to do as they please with the natural resources 
of that region. That is the great curse that to-day rests upon our game. 
When the nearest game warden is 50 miles away, and big game is only 
5 miles away, it is time for that game to take to the tall timber. 

But in the West, and East and South, there are many men and women 
who believe in reasonable conservation, and deplore destruction. We 
have not by any means reached the point where we can think of stopping 
in the making of game preserves, or forest preserves. Of the former, we 
have scarcely begun to make. The majority of the states of our Union 
know of state game preserves only by hearsay. But the time is coming 
when the states will come forward, and perfonn the serious duty that 
they neglect to-day. 

Let the statesmen of America be not afraid of making too many game 
preserves! For the next year, one per day would be none too many! 
Remember, that on one hand we have the Army of Destruction, and on 
the other the expectant mDlions of Posterity. No executor or trustee ever 
erred in safeguarding an estate too carefully. Fifty years hence, if your 
successors and mine find that too much land has been set aside for the 
good of the people, they can mighty easily restore any surplus to the 
public domain, and at a vastly increased valuation. Give Posterity at 
least one chance to debate the question : "Were our forefathers too liberal 
in the making of game and forest reserves?" 



336 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

We can always carve up any useless surplus of the public domain, and 
restore it to commercial uses; but none of the men of to-day will live 
long enough to see so strange a proceeding carried into effect. 

The game preserves of the United States government are so small 
(with the exception of the Yellowstone and Glacier Parks) , that very few 
people exer hear of them, and fewer still know of them in detail. It seems 
to be quite time that they should be set forth categorically; and it is 
most earnestly to be hoped that this list soon will be doubled. 

The Yellowstone National Park. — This was the first of the 
national parks and game preserves of the United States. Some of our 
game preserves are not exactly national parks, but this is both, by Act 
of Congress. 

It is 62 miles long from north to south, 54 miles wide and contains a. 
total area of 3,348 square miles, or 2,142,720 acres. Its western border 
lies in Idaho, and along its northern border a narrow strip lies in Montana. 
It is under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Interior, and it is 
guarded by a detachment of cavalry from the United States Army. The 
Superintendent is now a commissioned ofhcer of the United States Army. 
The business of protecting the game is performed partly by four scouts, 
who are civilians specially engaged for that purpose, but the number has 
always been totally inadequate to the work to be performed. 

At least one-half of the public interest attaching to the Yellowstone 
Park is based upon its wild animals. There, the average visitor sees, 
for the first time, wild mountain sheep, antelope, mule deer, elk, grizzly 
bears and white pelicans, roaming free. But for the tragedy of the Park 
bison herd, — slaughtered by poachers from 1890 to 1893, from 300 head 
down to 30 — visitors would see wild bison also; but now the few wild 
bison remaining keep as far as possible from the routes of tourist travel. 
The bison were slaughtered through an inadequate protective force, and 
(then) utterly inadequate laws. 

Lieut. -Col. L. M. Brett, U.S.A., Superintendent of the Yellowstone 
Park advises me (July 29, 1912) that the wild big game in the Yellow- 
stone Park in the summer of 1912, is as shown below, based on actual 
counts and estimates of the Park scouts, and particularly Scout McBride. 
"The estimates of buffalo, elk, antelope, deer, sheep and bear are based 
on actual counts, or very close observations, and are pretty nearly cor- 
rect." (Col. Brett). 

Wild Buffalo 49 

Moose 550 

Elk (in summer) 35,000 

Antelope 500 

Mountain Sheep 210 

Mule Deer 400 

White-tailed Deer 100 . 

Grizzly Bears 50 

Black Bears 100 



NATIONAL AND STATE PRESERVES AND REFUGES 337 

Pumas 100 

Gray Wolves none 

Coyotes 400 

Pelicans 1,000 

The actual count of 49 wild bison in the Park, 10 of which are calves 
of 1912, will be to all friends of the bison a dehghtful surprise. Here- 
tofore the little band had seemed to be stationary, which if true would 
soon mean a decline. 

The history of the wild game of the Yellowstone Park is blackened by 
two occurrences, and one existing fact. The fact is : the town of Gardiner 
is situated on the northern boundary of the Park, in the State of Montana. 
In Gardiner there are a number of men, armed with rifles, who toward 
game have the gray-wolf quality of mercy. 

The first stain is the massacre of the 270 wild bison for their heads and 
robes, already noted. The second blot is the equally savage slaughter 
in the early winter of 1911, by some of the people of Gardiner, reinforced 
by so-called sportsmen from other parts of the state, of all the park elk 
they could kill, — bulls, cows and calves, — because a large band wandered 
across the line into the shambles of Gardiner, on Buffalo Flats. 

If the people of Gardiner can not refrain from slaughtering the game 
of the Park — the very animals annually seen by 20,000 visitors to the 
Park, — then it is time for the American people to summon the town of 
Gardiner before the bar of public opinion, to show cause why the town 
should not be wiped off the map. 

The 35,000 elk that summer in the Park are compelled in winter to 
migrate to lower altitudes in order to find grass that is not under two feet 
of snow. In the winter of 1911-12, possibly 5,000 went south, into 
Jackson Hole, and 3,000 went northward into Montana. The sheep- 
grazing north of the Park, and the general settlement by ranchmen of 
Jackson Hole, have deprived the elk herds of those regions of their 
natural food. For several years past, up to and including the winter 
of 1910-11, some thousands of weak and immature elk have perished in 
the Jackson Hole country, from starvation and exposure. The ranchmen 
of that region have had terrible times, — in witnessing the sufferings of 
thousands of elk tamed by hunger, and begging in piteous dumb show 
for the small and all-too-few haystacks of the ranchmen. 

The people of Jackson Hole, headed by S. N. Leek, the famous pho- 
tographer and lecturer on those elk herds, have done all that they could 
do in the premises. The spirit manifested by them has been the exact 
reverse of that manifested in Gardiner. To their everlasting credit, they 
have kept domestic sheep out of the Jackson Valley, — by giving the 
owners of invading herds "hours" in which to get their sheep "all out, 
and over the western range." 

In 1909, the State of Wyoming spent in feeding starving elk $.5,000 

In 1911, the State of Wyoming spent in feeding starving elk ."),000 



3;^ OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

In 1911, the U. S. Government appropriated for feeding starving elk, 

and exporting elk $20,000 

In 1912, the Camp-Fire Club of Detroit gave, for feeding hungry elk. . . ' 100 

In 1910-11, about 3,000 elk perished in Jackson Hole 

In 1911-12, Mr. Leek's photographs of the elk herds showed an alarming absence 
of mature bulls, indicating that now the most of the breeding is done by- 
immature males. This means the sure deterioration of the species. 

The prompt manner in which Congress responded in the late winter 
of 191 1 to a distress call in behalf of the starving elk, is beyond all ordinary 
terms of praise. It was magnificent. In fear and trembling, Congress 
was asked, through Senator Lodge, to appropriate $5,000. Congress and 
Senator Lodge made it $20,000; and for the first time the legislature of 
Wyoming appealed for national aid to save the joint-stock herds of Wvo- 
ming and the Yellowstone Park. 

Glacier Park, Montana. — In the wild and picturesque mountains 
of northwestern Montana, covering both sides of the great Continental 
Divide, there is a region that has been splendidly furnished by the hand 
of Nature. It is a bewildering maze of thundering peaks, plunging 
valleys, evergreen forests, glistening glaciers, mirror lakes and roaring 
mountain streams. Its leading citizens are white mountain goats, 
mountain sheep, moose, mule deer and white-tailed deer, and among 
those present are black and grizzly bears galore. 

Commercially, the 1,400 square miles of Glacier Park, even with its 
60 glaciers and 260 lakes, are worth exactly the price of its big trees, 
and not a penny more. For mining, agriculture, horticulture and stock- 
raising, it is a cipher. As a transcendant pleasure ground and recreation 
wilderness for ninety millions of people, it is worth ninety millions of 
dollars, and not a penny less. It is a pleasure park of which the greatest 
of the nations of the earth, — whichever that may be, — might well be 
overbearingly proud; and its accessibility is almost unbelievable until 
seen. 

This park is bounded on the south by the Great Northern Railway, 
on the east by the Blackfoot Indian Reservation, on the north by Alberta 
and British Columbia, and on the west by West Fork of the Flathead 
River. Horizontally, it contains 1,400 square miles; but as the goat 
climbs, its area is at least double that. Its valleys are filled and its lakes 
are encircled by grand forests of Douglas fir, hemlock, spruce, white pine, 
cedar and larch ; and if ever they are destroyed by fire, it will be a national 
calamity, a century long. 

So long as the American people keep out of the poorhouse, let there be no 
lumber-cutting vandalism in that park, destroying the beauty of every acre 
of forest that is touched by axe or saw. The greatest beauty of those forests 
is the forest floor, which lumbering operations would utterly destroy. 

Never mind if there is "ripe timber" there! The American nation is 
not suffering for the dollars that those lovely forest giants would fetch 
by board measure. What if a tree does fall now and then from old age! 
We can stand the expense. If Posterity a hundred years hence finds it- 
.self lumberless, and wishes to use those trees, then let Posterity pay the 




UNITED STATES NATIONAL GAME PRESERVES 
and Five Pacific Bird Refuges 



340 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

price, and take them. We are not suffering for them; and our duty is to 
save them inviolate, and hand them down as a heritage that we proudly 
transmit unimpaired. 

The friends of wild life are particularly interested in Glacier Park as 
a national game reservoir, and refuge for wild life. On the north, in 
Alberta, it is soon to be extended by Waterton Lakes Park. 

When I visited Glacier Park, in 1909, with Frederick H. Kennard and 
Charles H. Conrad, I procured from three intelligent guides their best 
estimates of the amount of big game then in the Park. The guides 
were Thomas H. Scott, Josiah Rogers and Walter S. Gibb.* 

They compared notes, and finally agreed upon these figures: 

Elk 200 

Moose 2,500 

Mountain Sheep 700 

Mountain Goats 10,500 

Grizzly Bears • 1,000 to 1,500 

Black Bears 2,500 to 3,000 

As previously stated, one of the surprising features of this new wonder 
land is its accessibility. The Great Northern lands you at Belton. A 
ride of three miles over a good road through a beautiful forest brings you 
to the foot of Lake McDonald, and in one hour more by boat you are at 
the hotels at the head of the lake. At that point you are within three 
hours' horse-back ride of Sperry Glacier and the marvelous panorama that 
unrolls before you from the top of Lincoln Peak. At the foot of that 
Peak we saw a big, wild white mountain goat : and another one watched 
us climb up to the Sperry Glacier. 

Mt. Olympus National Monument. — For at least six years the 
advocates of the preservation of American wild life and forests vainly 
desired that the grand mountain territory around Mount Olympus, in 
northwestern Washington, should be established as a national forest and 
game preserve. In addition to the preservation of the forests, it was 
greatly desired that the remnant bands of Olympic wapiti (described as 
Cervus roosevelti) should be perpetuated. It now contains 1,975 speci- 
mens of that variety. In Congress, two determined efforts were made in 
behalf of the region referred to, but both were defeated by the enemies 
of forests and wild life. 

In an auspicious moment, Dr. T. S. Palmer, Assistant Chief of the 
Biological Survey, Department of Agriculture, thought of a law under 
which it would be both proper and right to bring the desired preserve 
into existence. The law referred to expressly clothes the President of 
the United States with power to preserve any monumental feature of 
nature which it clearly is the duty of the state to preserve for all time 
from the hands of the spoilers. 

With the enthusiastic approval and assistance of Representative 
William E. Humphrey, of Seattle, Dr. Palmer set in motion the machinery 

*See Recreation Magazine, May, 1910, p. 213 



NATIONAL AND STATE PRESERVES AND REFUGES 341 

necessary to the carrying of the matter before the President in proper 
form, and kept it going, with the result that on March 2, 1909, President 
Roosevelt affixed his signature to the document that closed the circuit. 

Thus was created the Mount Olympus National Monument, pre- 
serving forever 608,640 acres of magnificent mountains, valleys, glaciers, 
streams and forests, and all the wild creatures living therein and thereon. 
The people of the state of Washington have good reason to rejoice in the 
fact that their most highly-prized scenic wonderland, and the last sur- 
vivors of the wapiti in that state, are now preserved for all coming time. 
At the same time, we congratulate Dr. Palmer on the brilliant success 
of his initiative. 

The Superior National Game and Forest Preserve. — The 
people of Minnesota long desired that a certain great tract of wilderness 
in the extreme northern portion of that state, now well stocked with 
moose and deer, should be established as a game and forest preserve. 
Unfortunately, however, the national government could go no farther 
than to withdraw the lands (and waters) from entry, and declare it a 
forest reserve. At the right moment, some bright genius proposed that 
the national government should by executive order create a ''forest 
reserve," and then that the legislature of Minnesota should pass an act 
providing that every national forest of that state should also be regarded 
as a state -game preserve! 

Both those things were done, — almost as soon as said! Mr. Carlos 
Avery, the Executive Agent of the Board of Game and Fish Commis- 
sioners of Minnesota is entitled to great credit for the action of his state, 
and we have to thank Mr. Gifford Pinchot and President Roosevelt for 
the executive action that represented the first half of the effort. 

The new Superior Preserve is valuable as a game and forest reserve, 
and nothing else. It is a wilderness of small lakes, marshes, creeks, hum- 
mocks of land, scrubby timber, and practically nothing of commercial 
value. But the wilderness contains many moose, and zoologically, it is 
for all practical purposes a moose preserve. 

In it, in 1908 Mr. Avery saw fifty-one moose in three days, Mr. Ful- 
lerton saw 183 in nine days, and Mr. Fullerton estimated the total 
number of moose in Minnesota as a whole at 10,000 head. 

In area it contains 1,420,000 acres, and the creation of this great 
preserve was accomplished on April 13, 1909. 

The Wichita National Game Preserve. — In the Wichita Moun- 
tains, of southwestern Oklahoma, there is a National game preserve 
containing 57,120 acres. On this preserve is a fenced bison range and a 
herd of thirty-nine American bison which owe their existence to the 
initiative of the New York Zoological Society. On March 25, 1905, the 
Society proposed to the National Government the founding of a range 
and herd, on a basis that was entirely new. To the Society it seemed 
desirable that for the encouragement of Congress in the preservation of 
species that are threatened with extermination, the scientific corporations 



342 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

of America, and private individuals also, should do something more than 
to offer advice and exhortations to the government. 

Accordingly, the Zoological Society offered to present to the Govern- 
ment, delivered on the ground in Oklahoma, a herd of fifteen pure-blood 
bison as the nucleus of a new national herd, provided Congress would 
furnish a satisfactory fenced range, and maintain the herd. The offer 
was at once accepted by Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture, 
and the Society was invited to propose a site for a range. The Society 
sent a representative to the Wichita National Forest Reserve, who 
recommended a range, and made a report upon it, which the Society 
adopted. 

By act of Congress the range was at once established and fenced. Its 
area is twelve square miles (9,760 acres). In October, 1908, the Zoological 
Society took from its herd in the Zoological Park nine female and six male 
bison, and delivered them at the bison range. There were many predic- 
tions that all those bison would die of Texas fever within one year ; but 
the parties most interested persisted in trying conclusions with the famous 
tick of Texas. 

Mr. Frank Rush was appointed Warden of the new National Bison 
Range, and his management has been so successful that only two of the 
bison died of the fever, the disease has been stamped out, and the herd 
now contains thirty-nine head. Within five years it should reach the 
one-hundred mark. Elk, deer and antelope have been placed in the 
range, and all save the antelope are doing well. The Wichita Bison Range 
is an unqualified success. 

The Montana National Bison Range. — The opening of the 
Flathead Indian Reservation to settlement, in 1909, afforded a golden 
opportunity to locate in that region another national bison herd. Ac- 
cordingly, in 1908, the American Bison Society formulated a plan by 
which the establishment of such a range and herd might be brought about. 
That plan was successfully carried into effect, in 1909 and '10. 

The Bison Society proposed to the national government to donate a 
herd of at least twenty-five bison, provided Congress would purchase a 
range, fence it and maintain the herd. The offer was immediately 
accepted, and with commendable promptness Congress appropriated 
$40,000 with which to purchase the range, and fence it. The Bison 
Society examined various sites, and finally recommended what was 
regarded as an ideal location situated near Ravalli, Montana, north of 
jthe Jocko River and Northern Pacific Railway, and east of the Flathead 
River. The nearest stations are Ravalli and Dixon. 

The area of the range is about twenty-nine square miles (18,521 
acres) and for the purpose that it is to serve it is beautiful and perfect 
beyond compare. In it the bison herd requires no winter feeding whatever. 

In 1910 the Bison Society raised by subscription a fund of $10,526, 
and with it purchased 37 very perfect pure-blood bison from the famous 
Conrad herd at Kalispell, 22 of which were females. One gift bison was 
added by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Goodnight, two were presented by the 



NATIONAL AND STATE PRESERVES AND REFUGES :j4;i 

estate of Charles Conrad, and three were presented from the famous 
Corbin herd, at Newport, N. H., by the Blue Mountain Forest Association. 

Starting with that nucleus (of 43 head) in 1910, the herd has already 
(1912) increased to 80 head. The herd came through the severe win- 
ter of 1911-1912 without having been fed any hay whatever, and the 
founders of it confidently expect to live to see it increase to one thousand 
head. 

The Grand Canyon National Game Preserve of northern Arizona, 
embraces the entire Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, for a meandering 
distance of 101 miles, and adjacent territory to an extent of 2,333 square 
miles (1,492,928 acres). Owing to certain conditions, natural and other- 
wise, it is not the finest place in the world for the peaceful increase of 
wild gaine. The Canyon contains a few mountain sheep, and mule deer, 
but Buckskin Mountain, on the northwestern side, is reeking with moun- 
tain lions and gray wolves, and both those species should be shot out of 
the entire Grand Canyon National Forest. It was on Buckskin and the 
western wall of the Canyon itself that "Buffalo" Jones, Mr. Charles vS. 
Bird, and their party caught nine live mountain lions, in 1909. 

I regret to say that "Buffalo " Jones's catalo experiment on the Kaibab 
Plateau seems to have met an untimely and disappointing fate. For 
three years the bison and domestic cattle crossed, and produced a number 
of cataloes; but in 1911, practically the whole lot was wiped off the earth 
by cattle rustlers ! Mr. Jones thinks that it was guerrillas from southern 
Utah who murdered his enterprise, partly for the reason that no other 
persons were within striking distance of the herd. 

Mount Rainier National Park. — This fine forest park is the great 
summer outing ground of the people of the state of Washington. Its 
area is 324 square miles, and as its name implies it embraces Mount 
Rainier. Easily accessible from Seattle and Tacoma, and fairly well — 
though not adequately — provided with roads, trails, tent camps, hotels 
and livery transportation, it is really the Yellowstone Park of the North- 
west. 

The Yosemite National Park in California is so well known that 
no description of it is necessary. Its area is 1,124 square miles (719.(522 
acres). Its great value lies in its scenery, but along with that it is a 
sanctuary for such of the wild mammals and birds of California as will 
not wander beyond its borders to the certain death that awaits every- 
thing that may legally be killed in that state. 

Crater Lake National Park. — Like all the National Parks of 
America generally, this one also is a game sanctuary. It is situated on 
the summit of the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. The wonderful Crater 
Lake itself is 62 miles from Klamath Falls, 83 miles from Ashland, 
and it is 6 miles long, 4 miles wide and 200 feet deep. This National Park 
was created by Act of Congress in 1902. Its area is 249 square miles 
(159,360 acres), and it contains Columbian black-tailed deer, black bear, 
the silver-gray squirrel, and many birds, chiefly members of the grouse 
family. Owing to its lofty elevation, there are few ducks. 



344 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 



The Sequoia and General Grant National Parks were created 
for the special purpose of preserving the famous groves of "big trees," 
{Sequoia gigantea) . The former is in Tiilare County, the latter in Tulare 
and Fresno counties, California, on the western slope of the Sierra Nevadas. 
The area of Sequoia Park is 169,605 acres, and that of General Grant 
Park is 2,560 acres. They are under the control of the Interior Depart- 
ment. These Parks are important bird refuges, and Mr. Walter Fry, 
Forest Ranger, reports in them the presence of 261 species of birds, none 
of which may be hunted or shot. Into Sequoia Park 20 dwarf elk 
and 84 wild turkeys have been introduced, the former from the herd of 
Miller and Lux. 

Other National Parks 

Sully Hills National Park, at Devil's Lake (Fort Totten), North 
Dakota. Area 960 acres. 

Platt National Park, Sulphur Springs, Oklahoma; on account of 
many mineral springs. Area 848 acres. 

Mesa Verde National Park, Southwestern Colorado; on account 
of cliff dwellings, and wonderful cliff and canyon scenery. Area, 66 
square miles. 

National Monuments 

Under a special act of Congress, the President of the United States 
has the power forever to set aside from private ownership and occupation 
any important natural scenery, or curiosity, or wonderland, the preser- 
vation of which may fairly be regarded as of National importance, and a 
duty to the whole people of the United States. This is accomplished by 
presidential proclamation creating a "national monument." 

Under the terms of this act, 28 national monuments have been created, 
up to 1912, of which 17 are under the jurisdiction of the Department of 
the Interior, and 11 are managed by the Department of Agriculture. 
The full list is as follows: 



Alaska: 


Colorado: 


South Dakota: 


Sitka 


Wheeler 
Colorado 


Jewel Cave 


Arizona: 






Montezuma Castle 


Montana: 

Lewis & Clark Cavern 


Utah: 


Petrified Forest 


Natural Bridges 


Tonto 


Big Hole Battlefield 


Mukuntuweap 


Grand Canyon 


Rainbow Bridge 


Tumacacori 






Navajo 


New Mexico: 






El Morro 


Washington: 


California: 


Chaco Canyon 


Mount Olympus 


Lassen Peak 


Gila Cliff Dwellings 




Cinder Cove 


Gran Quivira 




Muir Woods 




Wyoming: 


Pinnacles 


Oregon : 


Devil's Tower 


Devil's Postpile 


Oregon Caves 


Shoshone Cavern 



NATIONAL AND STATE PRESERVES AND REFUGES 



345 



The National Bird Refuges. — Says Dr. T. S. Palmer*: "National 
bird reservations have been established during the last ten years by 
Executive order for the purpose of affording protection to important 
breeding colonies of water birds, or to furnish refuges for migratory 
species on their northern or southern flights, or during winter. With 
few exceptions these reservations are either small rocky islets or tracts 
of marsh land of no agricultural value." 

These reservations are of immense value to bird life, and their crea- 
tion represents the highest possible wisdom in utilizing otherwise value- 
less portions of the national domain. Dr. Palmer's alphabetical list of 
them is as follows, numbered in the order of their creation: 



Belle Fourche, S. Dak. .34 

Bering Sea, Alaska 44 

Bogoslof, Alaska 51 

Breton Island, La 2 

Bumping Lake, Wash.. .39 

Carlsbad, N. Mex 31 

Chase Lake, N. Dak.. . .20 

Clealum, Wash 38 

Clear Lake, Cal 52 

Cold Springs, Oreg 33 

Conconully, Wash 40 

Copalis Rock, Wash. ... 13 

Culebra, P. R 48 

Deer Flat, Idaho 29 

East Park, Cal 28 

East Timbalier, La 14 

Farallon, Cal 49 

Flattery Rocks, Wash. . 11 
Forrester Island, Alaska.53 



Green Bay, Wis 56 

Hawaiian Is., Hawaii.. . .26 
Hazy Islands, Alaska. ... 54 
Huron Islands, Mich .... 4 

Indian Key, Fla 7 

Island Bay, Fla 24 

Kachess, Wash 37 

Keechelus, Wash 36 

Key West, Fla 17 

Klamath Lake, Oreg. ... 18 

Loch-Katrine, Wyo 25 

Malheur Lake, Oreg. ... 19 

Matlacha Pass, Fla 23 

Minidoka, Idaho . ' 43 

Mosquito Inlet, Fla 15 

Niobrara, Nebr 55 

PalmaSola, Fla 22 

Passage Key, Fla 6 

Pathfinder, Wyo 41 



Pelican Island, Fla 1 

Pine Island, Fla 21 

Pribilof , Alaska 50 

Quillayute N'dles, Ala.skal2 

Rio Grande, N. Mex 32 

St. Lazaria, Alaska 46 

Salt River, Ariz 27 

Shell Keys, La 9 

Shoshone, Wyo 42 

Siskiwit, Mich 5 

Strawberry Valley, Utah 35 
Stump Lake, N. Dak. ... 3 

Tern Islands, La 8 

Three Arch Rocks, Oreg. 10 

Tortugas Keys, Fla 16 

Tuxedni, Alaska 45 

Willow Creek, Mont .... 30 
Yukon Delta, Alaska. ... 47 



In addition to the above, the following governmental reservations 
have been established for the protection of wild life: Yes Bay, Alaska, 
of 35,200 acres; Afognak Island, Alaska, 800 sq. miles; Midway Islands 
Naval Reservation, H. T. ; Farallon Island, Point Reyes and Ano Nuevo 
Island, California; Destruction Island, Washington, and Hawaiian 
Islands Reservation (Laysan). 

State Game Preserves in the United States 

Pennsylvania. — The proposition that every state, territory and 
province in North America and everywhere else, should establish a series 
of state forest and game preserves, is fairly incontestable. As a business 
proposition it is to-day no more a debatable question, or open to argu- 
ment, than is the water supply or sewer system of a city. The only per- 
fect way to conserve a water supply for a great human population is by 
acquiring title to water sheds, and either protecting the forests upon 
them, or planting forests in case none exist. 

In one important matter the state of Pennsylvania has been wide 
awake, and in advance of the times. I will cite her system of forest 

*National Reservations for the Protection of Wild Life, bv T. S. Palmer, U. S. 
Dept. of Agriculture, Circular No. 87, Oct. 5, 1912. 



84(1 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

reserves and game preserves, as a model plan for other states to follow ; 
and I sincerely hope that by the time the members of the present State 
Game Commission have passed from earth the people of Pennsylvania 
will have learned the value of the work they are now doing, and at least 
give them the appreciation that is deserved by public-spirited citizens 
who do large things for the People without hope of material reward. 
At this moment, Commissioner John M. Phillips and Dr. Joseph Kalbfus 
are putting their heart's blood into the business of preserving and increas- 
ing the game and other wild life of Pennsylvania; and the utter lack of 
appreciation that is now being shown in some quarters is really distressing. 
I I'efer particularly to the utterly misguided and mistaken body of hunters 
and anglers having headquarters at Harrisburg, whose members are 
grossly mislead into a wrong position by a man who seeks to secure a 
salaried state position through the hostile organization that he has 
built up, apparently for his own use. In the belief that those members 
generally are mislead and not mean-spirited, and that the organization 
contains a majority of conscientious sportsmen, I predict that ere long 
the evil genius of Pennsylvania game protection will be ordered to the 
rear, while the organization as a whole takes its place on the side of the 
Game Commission, where it belongs. 

The game sanctuary scheme that Pennsylvania has developed is so 
new that as yet only a very small fraction of the people of that state 
either understand it, or appreciate its far-reaching importance. 

To begin with, Pennsylvania has acquired up to date about one 
million acres of forest lands, scattered through 26 of the 67 counties of 
the state. These great holdings are to be gradually increased. These 
wild lands, including many sterile mountain "farms" of no real value 
for agricultural purposes, have been acquired, first of all, for the purpose 
of conserving the water supply of the state; and they are called the 
State Forest Reserves. 

Next in order, the State Game Commission has created, in favorable 
localities in the forest reserves, five great game preserves. The plan is 
decidedly novel and original, but is very simple withal. In the center of 
a great tract of forest reserve, a specially desirable tract has been chosen, 
and its boundaries marked out by the stringing of a single heavy fence 
wire, surrounding the entire selection. The area within that boundary 
wire is an absolute sanctuary for all wild creatures save those that 
prey upon game, and in it no man may hunt anything, nor fire a gun. 
The boundary wire is by no means a fence, for it keeps nothing out 
nor in. 

Outside of the wire and the sanctuary, men may hunt in the open 
season, but at the wire every chase must end. If the hunted deer knows 
enough to flee to the sanctuary when attacked, so much the better for 
the deer. The tide of wild life ebbs and flows under the wire, and be- 
yond a doubt the deer and grouse will quickly find that within it lies 
absolute safety. There the breeding and rearing of young may go on 
undisturbed. 



NATIONAL AND STATE PRESERVES AND REFUGES 347 

In view of the fact that hunting may go on in the forest reserve areas 
surrounding these sanctuaries, no intelligent sportsman needs to be told 
that in a few years all such regions will be teeming with deer, grouse and 
other game. Where there is one deer to-day there will be twenty ten 
years hence, — because the law of Pennsylvania forbids the killing of does; 
and then there will be twenty times the legitimate hunting that there is 
to-day. For example, the Clinton County Game Preserve of 3,200 acres 
is surrounded by 128,000 acres of forest reserve, which form legitimate 
hunting grounds for the game bred in the sanctuary reservoir. In Clear- 
field County the game .sanctuary is surrounded by 47,000 acres of Forest 
Reserve. 

The ^awc jjreserves created in Pennsylvania u]) to date are as follows: 

In Clinton County 3,200 acres 

In Clearfield County 3,200 acres 

In Franklin County 3,200 acres 

In Perry County 3,200 acres 

In Westmoreland (^ounty 2, .500 acres 

It is the deliberate intention of the Came Commission to increase 
these game preserves until there is at least one in each county. 

It is the policy of the Commission to clear out of the game sanctuaries 
all the mammals and birds that destroy wild life, such as foxes, .mink, 
weasels, skunks and destructive hawks and owls. This is accomplished 
partly by buying old horses, killing them in the preserves and poisoning' 
them thoroughly with strychnine. 

Each preserve now contains a nucleus herd of white-tailed deer, some 
of them imported from northern Michigan. Ruffed grouse are breeding 
rapidly, and in the Clearfield Cotmty Preserve there are said to be at 
least three thousand. The Game Commission considers it a patriotic 
duty to preserve the wild turkey, ruffed grouse and quail, rather than 
have those species replaced at great expense by species imported from the 
old world. In their work for the protection, preservation and increase of 
the game of Pennsylvania — partly for the purpose of providing legitimate 
hunting for the mechanic as well as the millionaire, — the State Game 
Commissioners are putting a great amount of thought and labor, and 
whenever their efforts are criticized, their motives impunged or their 
honesty questioned by men who are not worthy to unlace their shoes, 
it makes me tired and angry. 

New York: 

The Adirondack vState Park. — With wi.se and commendable fore- 
thought, the state of New York has preserved in the Adirondack wilder- 
ness, familiarly known as "the North Woods," a magnificent forest 
domain forever dedicated to campers, outdoorsmen and hunters. At 
present (1912) it contains 2,031 square miles (1,300.000 acres) of forest- 
clad hills, valleys and mountains, adorned by countless lakes and streams. 
By some persons it has been believed that in the State's forests the 
cutting and sale of large trees would be justifiable business, and agreeable 



348 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFB- 

to the public; but it has been demonstrated that this is not the case. 
The people of the state firmly object to the havoc that is unavoidably 
wrought by logging operations in beautiful forests. The state does not 
yet need any of the money that could be derived from such operations. 
The chief anxiety of the public is that hereafter forest fires shall be pre- 
vented, no matter what fire protection may cost! The burning of coal 
on any railway operated through the Adirondacks should be made a 
penal offense. 

Montana: 

In 1911 Governor Norris, Senator Cone and the legislature of Mon- 
tana, at the solicitation of W. R. Felton, L. A. Huffman and others, 
created the Snow Creek Game Preserve, fronting for ten miles on the 
Missouri River, in the northern side of Dawson County. It is a mag- 
nificent tract of bad-lands, very deeply eroded and carved, and highly 
picturesque. The new state preserve contains 96 square miles, but there 
is so little grazing ground for antelope and bison it is absolutely impera- 
tive that a narrow strip of level grass land should be added along the 
southern border. This proposed addition is being fiercely resisted^ by 
an organized movement of the sheep owners of Montana (the National 
Wool Growers' Association), who naturally want the public domain for 
the free grazing of their tariff-protected sheep-herds. It remains to be 
seen whether the three sheep men south of the preserve, — the only men 
who really are affected, — will be able to thwart a movement that has for 
its object the development of a very good game preserve for the benefit 
of the ninety millions of the general American public. The range is 
necessary to contain representatives of the big game of the plains that 
has been so ruthlessly swept away, and particularly the vanishing prong- 
horned antelope, once very numerous in that region. 

In order to relieve the sheep men of all trouble on account of that 
preserve, the area should be enlarged to the right dimensions and made a 
national preserve. A bill for that purpose (Senate 5,286) is now before 
the Senate, in Senator McLean's Committee, and help is needed to over- 
come the active hostility of the sheep men, who vow that it never shall he 
passed! All persons who read this are invited to take this matter up with 
their Senators and Representatives, without a moment's delay. 

Wyoming: 

The Teton State Preserve. — One of the largest and most im- 
portant state game preserves thus far established by any of our states 
is that which was created by Wyoming, in 1904. It is situated along the 
south of, and fully adjoining, the Yellowstone Park, and its area is 
900 square miles (576,000 acres). Its special purpose is to supplement 
for the elk herds and other big game the protection from killing that 
previously had been found in the Yellowstone Park alone. The State 
Preserve is an admirable half-way house for the migrating herds when 
they leave the National Park to seek their regular winter ranges in and 
around the Jackson Valley. 



NATIONAL AND STATE PRESERVES AND REFUGES 



349 




BIRD RESERVATIONS ON THE GULF COAST AND FLORIDA 

In 1909, Wyoming established the Big Horn Game Preserve, in the 
mountain range of that name. Into it 25 elk were taken from Jackson 
Hole, and set free, in 1910, at the expense of the Sheridan Cotmty Sports- 
men's Club. 

Louisiana: 

Great developments for the preservation of wild life have recently- 
been witnessed in Louisiana, all due to the initiative and persistent 
activities of two men, Edward A. Mcllhenny, of Avery Island, La., and 
Charles Willis Ward, of Michigan, lumbemian and horticulturist. 

The Louisiana State Wild Fowl Refuge on Vermillion Bay, has 
an area of 13,000 acres. It was presented to the state by Messrs. Ward 
and Mcllhenn}^ and formally accepted and protected. It contains a 
great area of fresh-water ponds and marshy meadows, wherein grows 
an abundant supply of food for wild fowl. It contains several miles of 
gravel beach, which during the winter season is visited by thousands of 
wild geese in quest of their indispensable supply of gravel. The ponds 
within its borders furnish feeding-grounds for canvasback ducks, red- 
head, mallard, blackhead and various species of wild geese. 

Other State Game Preserves 

Acres 

Idaho. — Payette River Game Preserve 230,000 

California. — ^Pinnacles Game Preserve 2.080 

Wyoming. — Big Horn Mountains Game Preserve. 
Montana. — Yellowstone Game Preserve. 

Pryor Mountain Game Preserve. 



CHAPTER XXXVII 
GAME PRESERVES AND GAME LAWS IN CANADA 

As now set forth on the map of North America, Canada is a vast 
country. We must no longer think of Ontario and Quebec as "Canada 
West" and "Canada East," because the new assistant-nation owns and 
rules everything from Labrador to British C( Jumbia, and all the north- 
ern mainland save Alaska. 

Although the fauna of Canada is strictly boreal, it is sufficiently dis- 
persed and diversified to demand wise legislation, and plenty of it. For a 
nation with an outfit of provinces so new, Canada already is well advanced 
in the matter of game laws and game preserves, and in some respects she 
has set the pace for. her southern neighbors. For example, in New 
Brunswick we see the lordly moose successfully hunted for sport, not 
only without being exterminated but actually on a basis that permits it 
to increase in number. In Nova Scotia we see a law in force which 
successfully prohibits the waste of moose meat, a loss that characterizes 
moose hunting everywhere else throughout the range of that animal. 
All over southern Canada the use of automatic shotguns in htmting is 
strictly prohibited. 

On the other hand, the laws of the Canadians are weak in not pre- 
venting the sale of all wild game and the killing of antelope. In the 
matter of game-selling, there are far too many open doors, and a sweeping 
reform is very necessary. 

Speaking generally, and with application from Labrador to British 
Columbia, the American process of game extermination according to law 
is vigorously and successfully being pursued by the people of Canada. 
The open seasons are too long, and the bag limits are too generous to the 
gunners. As it is elsewhere, the bag-limit laws on birds are a farce, be- 
cause it is impossible to enforce them, save on every tenth man. For 
example, in his admirable "Final Report of the Ontario Game and 
Fisheries Commission" (1912), Commissioner Kelly Evans says: 

"The prairie chicken, which formerly was comparativel}'' plentiful 
throughout the greater portion of the Rainy River District, has now 
become practically extinct in that region. Various causes have been 
assigned for this, but it would seem, as usual, to have been mainly the 
fault of indiscriminate and excessive slaughter." (Page 226.) 

Like the United States, the various portions of Canada have their 
various local troubles in wild-life protection. I think the greatest prac- 
tical difficulties, and the most real opposition to adequate measures, is 
found in the Provinces of Quebec and Ontario. Is it because the French- 



GAME PRP:SF.RVES AND LAWS IN CANADA 351 

descended population is impatient of real restraint, and objects to meas- 
ures that are drastic, even though they are necessary? In Ontario. 
Commissioner Evans has been splendidly supported by the Government, 
and by all the real sportsmen of that province; but the gunners and 
guerrillas of destruction have successfully postponed several of the re- 
forms that he has advocated, and which should have been carried into 
effect. 

So far as public moral support for game protection is concerned I 
think that the prairie and mountain provinces have the best of it. In 
Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Athabasca and British Columbia, 
the spirit of the people is mainly correct, and the chief thing that seems 
to be lacking is a Kelly Evans in each of those provinces to urge public 
sentiment into strong action. For example, why should Alberta still 
permit the hunting and killing of prong-horned antelope, when it is so 
well known that that species is vanishing like a mist before the morning 
sun? I think it is because no one seems to have risen up as G. O. Shields 
did in the United States, to make a big fuss about it, and demand a re- 
form. At any rate, all the provinces of Canada that still possess antelope 
should immediately pass laws giving that species absolute close seasons for 
ten years. Why neglect it longer, when such neglect is now so very 
wrong? Whether this is done or not, I sincerely hope that hereafter no 
true American sportsman, will be guilty of killing one of the vanishing 
antelope of Canada, even though "the law doth give it." 

The Game Preserves of Canada 

In the creation of National parks and gaine preserves, some of the 
provinces of the Canadian nation have displayed a degree of foresight 
and enterprise that merits sincere admiration. While in different j^rox^- 
inces the exact status of these establishments may \'ary somewhat, the 
main purpose of each is the same, — the preservation of the forests and 
the wild life. In all of them a regulated amount of fishing is permitted, 
and in some the taking of fur-bearing animals is permitted ; but I believe 
in all the birds and furless mammals are strictly protected. In some 
parks the carrying of firearms still is permitted, but that pri\dlege is 
quite out of harmony with the spirit and purposes of a game preserve, 
and should be abolished. If it is necessary to carry firearms through a 
preserve, as often happens in the Yellowstone Park, it can be done under 
seals that are affixed by duly appointed officers • and thus will temptation 
be kept out of the way of sinners. 

Up to this date I never have seen a publication which set forth in one 
place even so much as an annotated list of the game preserves of the 
various provinces of Canada, and at present exact information regarding 
them is rather difficult to obtain. It seems that an adequate govern- 
mental publication on this subject is now due, and overdue. 

Ontario. — "At the present time," says Commissioner Evans in his 
"Final Report," "the Algonquin National Park is the only actual game 
preserve in the Pro\'ince, being in fact a game reserve and not a forest 



352 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

reserve; but in the past at least a measure of protection would seem to 
have been afforded the game in most of the [forest] reserves, owing to the 
fact that the carrying of firearms therein has been discouraged, and it 
would appear to require but the passing of an Order-in- Council to render 
the carrying of firearms in all reserves illegal. It is sincerely to be hoped 
that not only will such action be taken without delay, but also that all 
the forest reserves will be declared game reserves in the strictest sense." 

To this sentiment all friends of wild life will join a fervent wish for its 
realization. As conditions are to-day, it is impossible to have too many 
game reserves! There is everything to gain and nothing to lose by making 
every national forest and forest reserve on the whole continent of North 
America a game preserve in the strictest sense, and we hope to live to see 
that end accomplished, both in the United States and Canada. 

The Algonquin National Park is situated in the Parry Sound re- 
gion, just above the Muskoka Lakes, and it has an area of 1,930 square 
miles. It is well stocked with moose, caribou, white-tailed deer, black 
bear and beaver. During the period of protection the beaver have in- 
creased so greatly that about 1,000 were trapped last year for the market, 
by officers of the government; and about 25 were sold to zoological 
gardens and parks, at $25 each. 

The Quetico Forest Reserve, area 1,560 square miles, was created as 
the Canadian complement of the Minnesota National Forest and Game 
Preserve. The two join on the international boundary, and each helps 
to protect the other. Both are well stocked with moose, and will render 
valuable service in the preservation of a mid-continental contingent of 
that species. 

Alberta. — In the making of game preserves the province of Alberta 
has been splendidly progressive and liberal. The total result is fairly 
beyond the reach of ordinary words of praise. It sets a pace that should 
result in wide-spread benefits to the wild life of North America. In it 
there is nothing faint-hearted. It should make some of our States think 
seriously regarding their own shortcomings in this particular field of 
endeavor. 

Alberta's National Parks 

Acres Sq. miles 

Rocky Mountains Park 2,764,800 4,320 

Yoho Park 1,799,680 2,812 

Glacier Park 1,474,560 2,304 

Buffalo Park 384,000 600 

Elk Island Park 40,000 62 

Jasper Park 3,488,000 5,450 

Waterton Lakes Park 34,560 54 

9,985,600 15,602 

The Rocky Mountains Park is near Banff. The Yoho and Glacier 
Parks are near Field. The Buffalo Park is near Wainwright, on the 
plains, and it was created and fenced especially as a hoine for the herd 



GAME PRESERVES AND LAWS IN CANADA 353 

of American bison that was purchased in Montana in 1909. It now 
contains 1,052 head of bison, 20 moose, 35 deer, 7 elk, and 6 antelope. 

The Elk Island Park is near Fort Saskatchewan and Lamont, and 
at this date (1912) it contains 53 bison, 28 elk, 30 deer and 5 moose. 
The bison subsist entirely by grazing, and upon hay cut within the Park. 

Jasper Park, established in 1908, is on the Athabasca River and the 
Grand Trvmk Pacific Railway, near Strathcona. Sixty miles of the rail- 
way line lie within the Park. vScenically, Jasper Park is a rival of Rocky 
Mountains Park, and undoubtedly possesses great attractions for 
travellers who appreciate the beauties and grandeur of Nature as ex- 
pressed in mountains, valleys, lakes and streams. 

Waterton Lakes Park is situated in the extreme southwestern corner 
of Alberta, in the Rocky Mountains surrounding the Waterton Lakes. 
At present it is nine miles long from north to south and six miles wide, 
with its southern end resting on the international boundary, and adjoin- 
ing our Glacier Park. It is the home of a few bands of mountain sheep 
that carry very large horns. Through the initiative of Frederick K. 
Vreeland, the Camp-Fire Club of America two years ago represented to 
the Government of Alberta the great desirabihty of enlarging this pre- 
serve, toward the north and west, the better to protect the mountain 
sheep and other big game of that region. The suggestion was received 
in a friendly spirit, and there is gcod reason to hope that at an early date 
the enlargement will be made. 

British Columbia. — This province has made an excellent beginning 
in the creation of game preserves. The first agitation on that subject was 
begun in 1906, by two sportsmen whose names in connection w^th it have 
long since been forgotten. On November 15, 1908, the Legislative Coun- 
cil of British Columbia issued a proclamation that created a very fine 
game preserve in the East Kootenai District, between the Elk and Bull 
Rivers and northwestward thereof to the White River country. By an 
unfortunate oversight, the new preserve never has been officially named, 
but we may designate it here as 

The Elk River Game Preserve. — This preserve has a total area of 
about 450 square miles, and includes a fine tract of mountains, valleys, 
lakes and streams. It contained in 1908 about 1,000 mountain goats, 200 
sheep, a few elk and deer, and about 50 grizzly bears. All these have 
notably increased during the period of absolute protection that they 
have enjoyed. It is probable that this preserve contains more white 
mountain goats than any other preserve that thus far has been made. 
It was in this region that Mr. John M. Phillips and Prof. Henry Fairfield 
Osborne made the first mountain goat photographs ever made at close 
range. It is to be hoped that the protection of this preserve, both as to 
its wild life and its timber, will be made perpetual. 

Eraser River Preserve. — Next after the above there was created in 
British Columbia a game preserve covering a large portion of the moun- 
tain territory that rises between the North and South Forks of the 
Fraser River. It is about 75 miles long by 30 miles wide and contains 



354 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

about 2,250 square miles. Concerning its character and wild-life popula- 
tion we have no details. 

Yalakom Game Preserve. — On the north side of Bridge River (a 
western tributary of the Fraser), about twenty miles above Lilloet, 
there has been established a game preserve having an area of about 
215 square miles. 

Manitoba. — In the making of game preserves, Manitoba has made 
an excellent beginning. It is good to see from Duck Mountain in the 
north to Turtle Mountain in the south a chain of four liberal preserves, 
each one protected in unmistakable terms as follows : " Carrying fire- 
arms, hunting or trapping strictly prohibited within this area." 

The lake regions of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta form what 
is probably the most important wild-fowl breeding-ground in North 
America. To a great extent it rests with those provinces to say 
whether the central United States shall have any ducks and geese, or 
not ! It is high time that an international treaty should be made between 
the United States, Canada and Mexico for the federal protection of all 
migratory birds. 

These preserves are of course intended to conserve wild-fowl, shore- 
birds, grouse and all other birds, as well as big game. Thanks to the 
cooperation of Mr. J. M. Macoun, of the Canadian Geological vSurvey, 
I am able to offer the following; 

List of Manitoba's Game Preserves 

Duck Mountain Preserve 324 sq. miles, 207,3(30 acres. 

Riding Mountain Preserve 360 " " 230,000 " 

Spruce Woods Preserve 64 " " 40,960 " 

Turtle Mountain Preserve 100 " " 64,000 " 

848 " " 542.320 " 

Manitoba is to be congratulated on this record. 

Quebec. — This province has created two huge game preserves, well 
worthy of the fauna that they are intended to conserve when all hunt- 
ing in them is prohibited ! 

The Laurentides National Park is second in area of all the national 
parks of Canada, being surpassed only by the Rocky Mountains Park of 
British Columbia. Its area is 3565 square miles, or 2,281,600 acres. 
It occupies the entire central portion of the great area surrounded by 
Lake St. John, the Saguenay River, the wide portion of the St. Law- 
rence, and the St. Maurice River on the west. Its southern boundary 
is in several places only 16 miles from the St. Lawrence, while its most 
northern angle is within 13 miles of Lake St. John. Its greatest width 
from east to west is 71 miles, and its greatest length from north to south 
is 79 miles. It covers a huge watershed in which over a dozen large 
rivers and many small ones have their sources. It is indeed a forest 
primeval. The rivers are well stocked with fish, and the big game in- 



GAME PRESERVES AND LAWS IX CANADA 35.5 

eludes moose, woodland earibou, black bear, lynx, beaver, marten, fisher, 
mink, fox, and — -sad to say — the g^ray wolf. The caribou live in rather 
small bands, from 10 up to 100. 

Unfortunately, huntinj.,^ under license is i)ermittcd in the Laurentian 
National Park, and therefore it is by no means a real game preserve! 
It is a near-preserve. 

The Gaspesian Forest, Fish and Game Preserve, created in 190(3, is in 
"the Gaspe country." and it has an area of 2500 square miles situated 
in the eastern Quebec counties of Gaspe and Alatane. 

The Connaiighi National Park, to be named in honor of H. R. H. the 
Duke of Connaught, has been proposed by Mr. J. M. Macoun, of the 
Canadian Geological Survey. The general location chosen is the moun- 
tains and forested territory north of Ottawa and the Ottawa River. 
within easy access from the Canadian capitol. On the map the location 
recommended lies between the Gatincau River on the east and Wolf 
Lake on the west. The proposal is meeting with much popular favor, 
and it is extremely orobable that it will be earned into effect at an 
early date. 

Labrador. — During the past two years Lieut. -Col. William Wood 
has strongly advocated the making of game preserves in Labrador, that 
will not only tend to preserve the scanty fauna of that region from ex- 
tinction but will also aid in bringing it back. While Col. Wood's very 
energetic and praiseworthy campaign has not yet been crowned with 
success, undoubtedly it will be successful in the near future, because 
ultimateh^ such causes always w^n their objects, provided they are prose- 
cuted with the firm and unflagging persistence which has characterized 
this particular campaign. We congratulate Col. Wood on the success 
that he will achieve in the near future ! 

Game Laws of the Canadian Provinces 

Alberta. — The worst feature of the Alberta laws is the annual open 
season on antelope, two of which may be killed under each license. This 
is entirely wrong, and a perpetual close season should at once be enacted. 
Duck shooting in August is wrong, and the season should not open until 
September. It is not right that duck -killing should be made so easy and 
so fearfully prolonged that extermination is certain. .-1// killing of cranes 
and shore birds should be absolutely stopped, for five years. No wheat- 
producing province can afford the expense to the wheat crops of the 
slaughter of shore birds, thirty species of which arc great crop-protectors. 

The bag limit of two sheep is too high, by 50 per cent. It should 
immediately be cut down to one sheep, before sheep hunting in Alberta 
becomes a lost art. Sheep Minting should not be encouraged — quite the 
reverse! There are already too many sheep-crazy sportsmen. The bag 
limit on grouse and ptarmigan of 20 per day or 200 in a season is simply 
legalized slaughter, no more and no less, and if it is continued, a grouseless 
province will be the quick result. The birds are not sufficiently numerous 



356 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

to withstand the guns on that basis. Alberta should be wiser than the 
states below the international boundary that are annihiiating their 
remnants of birds as fast as they can be found. 

British Columbia. — We note with much satisfaction that the 
Provincial Game Warden, Mr. A. Bryan Williams, has beer allowed 
$37,000 for the pay of game wardens, and $28,000 for the destruction of 
wolves, coyotes, pumas and other game-destroying animals. During the 
past two years the following game-destroyers were killea, and bounties 
were paid upon them: 

1909-10 1910-11 

Wolves 655 518 

Coyotes 1,454 3,653 

Cougars 3S2 277 

Horned Owls 854 2,285 

Golden Eagles 29 73 

3,374 6,806 

"Now," says Warden Williams in his excellent annual report for 1911, 
"in these two years a total of 2,896 wolves ani cougars and 5,141 coyotes 
were destroyed, as well as a number of others poisoned and not recovered 
:::or the bounty. Allowing fifty head for each wolf and cougar and ten 
for each coyote, by their bounties alone 196,210 head of game and domes- 
tic animals were saved. Is it any wonder that ieer are increasing almost 
everywhere ? ' ' 

The great horned owl has been and still is a great scourge to the 
upland game birds, partly because when game is abundant "they become 
fastidious, and eat only the brains of their prey." The destruction of 
3,139 of them on the Lower Mainland during the last two years has made 
these owls sing very small, and says the warden, "Is it any wonder that 
grouse are again increasing?" 

I have discussed with the Provincial Game Warden the advisability 
of putting a limit of one on the grizzly bear, but Mr. Williams advances 
good reasons for the opinion that it would be impracticable to do so at 
present. I am quite sure, however, that the time has already arrived 
when a limit of one is necessary. During the present year three of my 
friends who went hunting in British Columbia, each killed j grizzly bears! 
Hereafter I will "locate " no more bear hunters in that country until 
the bag limit is reduced to one grizzly per year. Since 1905 the trapping 
of bears south of the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway has been 
stopped ; and an excellent move too. A Rocky Mountain without a grizzly 
bear is like a tissue-paper rose. 

The bag limit on the big game of British Columbia is at least twice 
too liberal, — five deer, two elk, two moose (one in Kootenay County), 
three caribou and three goats. There is no necessity for such wasteful 
liberality. Few sportsmen go to British Columbia for the sake of a large 
lot of animals. I know many men who have been there to hunt, and the 
great majority cared more for the scenery and the wild romance of camp- 
ing out in ground mountains than for blood and trophies. 



GAME PRESERVES AND LAWS IN CANADA 357 

Manitoba. — What are we to think of a "bag limit" of fifty ducks 
per day in October and November? A "limit" indeed! Evidently, 
Manitoba is tired of having ducks, ruffed grouse, pinnated and other 
grouse pestering her farmers and laborers. While assuming to fix bag 
limits that will be of some benefit to those species, the limit is distinctly 
off, and nothing short of a quick and drastic reform will save a remnant 
that will remain visible to the naked eye. 

New Brunswick. — This is the banner provmce in the protection of 
moose, caribou and deer, even while permitting them to be shot for sport. 
Of course, only males are killed, and I am assured by competent judges 
that thus far the kilHng of the finest and largest male moose has had no 
bad effect upon the stature or antlers of the species as a whole. 

Nova Scotia. ^ — If there is anything wrong with the game laws of 
Nova Scotia, it lies in the wide-open sale of moose meat and all kinds of 
feathered game during the open season. If that province were more 
heavily populated, it would mean a great destruction of game. Even 
with conditions as they are, the sale permitted is entirely wrong, and 
against the best interests of 97 per cent of the people. 

As previously mentioned, the law against the waste of moose meat is 
both novel and admirable. The saving of any considerable portion of 
the flesh of a full-grown bull moose, along with its head, is a large order; 
but it is right. The degree of accountability to which guides are held for 
the doings of the men whom they pilot into the woods is entirely com- 
mendable, and worthy of imitation. If a sportsman or gunner does the 
wrong thing, the guide loses his license. 

Saskatchewan. — This is another of the too-liberal provinces having 
no real surplus of big game with which to sustain for any length of time 
an excess of generosity. I am told that in this province there is now a 
great deal of open country around each wild animal. And yet, it cheer- 
fully offers two moose, two elk, two caribou and two antelope per season 
to each licensed gunner or sportsman. The limit is too generous by half. 
Why throw away an extra $250 worth of game with each license ? That 
is precisely what the people of Saskatchewan are doing to-day. 

And that antelope-killing! It should be stopped at once, and for ten 
years. 

Yukon. — This province permits the sale of all the finest and best 
wild game within its borders, — moose, elk, caribou, bison, musk-ox, 
sheep and goats! The flesh of all these may be sold during the open 
season, and for sixty days thereafter. Of the species named above, the 
barren ground caribou is the only one regarding which we need not worry ; 
because that species still exists in millions. The Osborn caribou {Rangifer 
osborni), can be exterminated in our own times, because it is nowhere 
really numerous, and it inhabits exposed situations. 



CHAPTER XXXVII r 

PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES 

Primarily, in the early days of the Man-on-Horseback, the self- 
■elected and predatory lords of creation evolved the private game pre- 
serve as a scheme for preventing other fellows from shooting, and for 
keeping the game sacred to slaughter by themselves. The idea of con- 
serving the game was a fourth-rate consideration, the first being the 
estoppel of the other man. The old-world owner of a game preserve 
delights in the annual killing of the surplus game, and we have even 
heard it whispered that in the Dark Ages there were kings who enjoyed 
the wholesale slaughter of deer, wild boar, pheasants and grouse. If 
we may accept as true the history of sport in Europe, there have been 
men who have loved slaughter with a genuine blood-lust that is quite 
foreign to the real nature-loving sportsman. 

In America, the impulse is different. Here, there is raging a genuine 
fever for private gaine preserves. Some of those already existing are of 
fine proportions, and cost fortunes to create. Every true sportsman who 
is rich enough to own a private game preserve, sooner or later acquires 
one. You will find them scattered throughout the temperate zone of 
North America from the Bay of Fund}^ to San Diego. I have had in- 
vitations to visit preserves in an unbroken chain from the farthest corner 
of Quebec to the Pacific Coast, and from Grand Island, Lake Superior 
to the Gulf of Mexico. It was not necessarily to hunt, and kill some- 
thing, but to see the game, and the beauties of nature. 

The wealthy American and Canadian joyously buys a tract of wilder- 
ness, fences it, stocks it with game both great and small, and provides 
game keepers for all the year round. At first he has an idea that he will 
" hunt " therein, and that his guests will hunt also, and actually kill game. 
In a mild way, this fiction sometimes is maintained for years. The 
owner may each year shoot two or three head of his surplus big game, 
and his tenderfoot guests who don't know what real hunting is may also 
kill something, each year. But in most of the American preserves with 
which I am well acquainted, the gentlemanly "sport" of "hunting big 
game" is almost a joke. The trouble is, usually, the owner becomes so 
attached to his big game, and admires it so sincerely, he has not the 
heart to kill it himself ; and he finds no joy whatever in seeing it shot down 
by others! 

In this country the slaughter of game for the market is not con- 
sidered a gentlemanly pastime, even though there is a surplus of pre- 
serve-bred game that must be reduced. To the average American, the 



PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES ;io9 

slaughter of half -tame elk, deer and birds that have been bred in a 
preserve does not appeal in the least. He knows that in the protection 
of a preserve, the wild creatures lose much of their fear of man, and 
become easy marks ; and shall a real sportsman go out with a gun and a 
bushel of cartridges, on a pony, and without warning betray the con- 
fidence of the wild in terms of fire and blood? Others may do it if they 
like; but as a rule that is not what an American calls "sport." One 
wide-awake and well-armed grizzly bear or mountain sheep outwitted 
on a mountain-side is worth more as a sporting proposition than a 
quarter of a mile of deer carcasses laid out side by side on a nice park 
lawn to be photographed as "one day's kill." 

In America, the shooting of driven game is something of which we 
know little save by hearsay. In Europe, it is practiced on everything 
from Scotch grouse to Italian ibex. The German Crown Prince, in his 
fascinating little volume "From My Hunting Da^^-Book," very neatly 
fixes the value of such shooting, as a real sportsman's proposition, in the 
following sentence: 

"The shooting of driven game is merely a question of marksmanship, 
and is after all more in the nature of a shooting exercise than sport." 

I have seen some shooting in preserves that was too tame to be called 
sport; but on the other hand I can testify that in grouse shooting as it 
is done behind the dogs on Mr. Carnegie's moor at Skibo, it is sport in 
which the hunter earns every grouse that falls to his gun. At the same 
time, also, I believe that the shooting of madly running ibex, as it is 
done by the King of Italy in his three mountain preserves, is sufficientlv 
difficult to put the best big-game hunter to the test. There are times 
when shooting driven game calls for far more dexterity with the rifle 
than is ordinarily demanded in the still-hunt. 

In America, as in England and on the Continent of Europe, private 
game preserves are so numerous it is impossible to mention more than a 
very few of them, unless one devotes a volume to the subject. Probabl}- 
there are more than five hundred, and no list of them is "up to date" 
for more than one day, because the number is constantly increasing. I 
make no pretense even of possessing a list of those in America, and I 
mention only a few of those with which I am best acquainted, by wav 
of illustration. 

One of the earliest and the most celebrated deer parks of the United 
States was that of Hon. John Dean Caton, of two hundred acres, located 
near Ottawa, 111., established about 1859. It was the experiments and 
observations made in that park that yielded Judge Caton's justly famous 
book on "The Antelope and Deer of America." 

The first game preserve established by an incorporated club was 
"Blooming Grove Park," of one thousand acres, in Pennsylvania, where 
great success has been attained in the breeding and rearing of white- 
tailed deer. 

In the eastern United States the most widely-known game preserve 
is Blue Mountain Forest Park, near Newport, New Hampshire. It was 



360 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

founded in 1885, by the late Austin Corbin, and has been loyally and 
diligently maintained by Austin Corbin, Jr., George S. Edgell and the 
other members of the Corbin family. Ownership is vested in the Blue 
Mountain Forest Association. The area of the preserve is 27,000 acres, 
and besides embracing much fine forest on Croydon Mountain, it also 
contains many converted farms whose meadow lands afford good grazing. 

This preserve contains a large herd of bison (86 head), elk, white- 
tailed deer, wild boar and much smaller game. The annual surplus of 
bison and other large game is regularly sold and distributed throughout 
the world for the stocking of other parks and zoological gardens. Each 
year a few surplus deer are quietly killed for the Boston market, but a 
far greater number are sold alive, at from $25 to $30 each in carload lots. 

Iri the Adirondacks of northern New York, there are a great many 
private game preserves. Dr. T. S. Palmer, in his pamphlet on "Private 
Game Preserves" (Department of Agriculture) places the number at 60, 
and their total area at 791,208 acres. Some of them have caused much 
irritation among some of the hunting, fishing and trapping residents of 
the Adirondack region. They seem to resent the idea of the exclusive 
ownership of lands that are good hunting-grounds. This view of property 
rights has caused much trouble and some bloodshed, two persons having 
heen killed for presuming to assert exclusive rights in large tracts of 
wilderness property. 

"In the upland preserve under private ownership," says Dr. Palmer, 
* ' may be found one of the most important factors in the maintenance of 
the future supply of game and game birds. Nearly all such preserves are 
maintained for the propagation of deer, quail, grouse, or pheasants. 
They vary widely in area, character, and purpose, and embrace some of 
the largest game refuges in the country. Some of the preserves in North 
Carolina cover from 15,000 to 30,000 acres; several in South Carolina 
■exceed 60,000 acres in extent." The Megantic Club's northern preserve, 
on the boundary between Quebec and Maine, embraces nearly 200 square 
miles, or upward of 125,000 acres. 

Comparatively few of the larger preserves are enclosed, and on such 
grounds, hunting becomes sport quite as genuine as it is in regions open 
to free hunting. In some instances part of the tract is fenced, while 
large unenclosed areas are protected by being posted. The character of 
their tenure varies also. Some are owned in fee simple; others, partic- 
ularly the larger ones, are leased, or else comprise merely the shooting 
rights on the land. In both size and tenure, the upland preserves of the 
United States are comparable with the grouse moors and large deer forests 
■of Scotland. 

Of the game preserves in the South, I know one that is quite ideal. 
It is St. Vincent Island, near Apalachicola, Florida, in the northern edge 
of the Gulf of Mexico. It was purchased in 1909 by Dr. Ray V. Pierce, 
and his guests kill perhaps one hundred ducks each year out of the 
thousands that flock to the ten big ponds that occupy the eastern third 
of the island. Into those ponds much good duck food has been intro- 



PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES 



361 




GULF OF MEXICO 



MAP OP MARSH ISLAND AND ADJACENT WILD-FOWL PRESERVES 

duced, — Potamogeton pectinatus and perfoliatus. The area of the island 
is twenty square miles. Besides being a great winter resort for ducks, 
its sandy, pine-covered ridges and jungles of palme to and live oak 
afford fine haunts and feeding grounds for deer. Those jungles contain 
two species of white-tailed deer {Odocoileus louisiana and osceola), and 
Dr. Pierce has introduced the Indian sambar deer and Japanese sika deer 
(Cervus sika), both of which are doing well. We are watching the prog- 
ress of those big sambar deer with very keen interest, and it is to be 
recorded that already that species has crossed with the Louisiana white- 
tailed deer. 

During the autumn of 1912', pubHc attention in the United States 
was for a time focused on the purchase of Marsh Island, Louisiana, by 
Mrs. Russell Sage, and its permanent dedication to the cause of wild- 
life protection. This delightful event has brought into notice the 
Louisiana State Game Preserve of 13,000 acres near Marsh Island, 
and its hinterland (and water) of 11,000 acres adjoining, which con- 
stitutes the Ward-Mcllhenny Wild Fowl Preserve. These three great 
preserves taken together as they lie form a wild -fowl sanctuary of great 
size, and of great value to the whole Mississippi Valley. Now that all 
duck-shooting therein has been stopped, it is safe to predict that they 
shortly will be inhabited by a wild-fowl population that will really stagger 
the imagination. 

Duck-Shooting "Preserves." — A ducking "preserve" is a large 
tract of land and water owned by a few individuals, or a club, for the 
purpose of preserving exclusively for themselves and their friends the 
best possible opportunities for killing largo numbers of ducks and 



362 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

geese without interference. In no sense whatever are they intended to 
preserve or increase the supply of wild fowl. The real object of their 
existence is duck and goose slaughter. For example, the worst goose- 
slaughter story on record comes to us from the grounds of the Glenn 
County Club in California, whereon, as stated elsewhere, two men armed 
with automatic shotguns killed 218 geese in one hour, and bagged a total 
of 452 in one day. 

I shall not attempt to give any list of the so-called ducking "pre- 
serves." The word "preserve," when applied to them, is a misnomer. 
Thirteen states have these incorporated slaughtering-grounds for ducks 
and geese, the greatest number being in California, Illinois, North Caro- 
lina and Virginia. California has carried the ducking-club idea to the 
limit where it is claimed that it constitutes an abuse. Dr. Palmer says 
that one or two of the club preserves on the western side of the San 
Joaquin Valley contain upward of 40 square miles, or 25,000 acres each! 
With considerable asperity it is now publicly charged (in the columns of 
The Examiner of San Francisco) that for the unattached sportsmen there 
is no longer any duck-shooting to be had in California, because all the 
good ducking-grounds are owned and exclusively controlled by clubs. 
In many states the private game preserves are a source of great irritation, 
and many have been attacked in courts of law.* 

But I am not sorrowing over the woes of the unattached duck-hunter, 
or in the least inclined to champion his cause against the ducking-club 
member. As slaughterers and exterminators of wild-fowl, rarely exer- 
cising mercy under ridiculous bag-limits, they have both been too heedless 
of the future, and one is just as bad for the game as the other. If either 
of them favored the game, I would be on his side; but I see no difference 
between them. They both kill right up to the bag-limit, as often as they 
can; and that is what is sweeping away all our feathered game. 

Curiously enough, the angry unattached duck-hunters of California 
are to-day proposing to have revenge on the duck-clubbers by removing 
all restrictions on the sale of game! This is on the theory that the duckless 
sportsmen of the State of California would like to buy dead ducks and 
geese for their tables! It is a novel and original theory, but the sane 
people of California never will enact it into law. It would be a step just 
twenty years backward! 

The Public vs. the Private Game Preserve. — Both the executive 
and the judiciary branches of our state governments will in the future be 
called upon with increasing frequency to sit in judgment on this case. 
Conditions about us are rapidly changing. The precepts of yesterday 
may be out of date and worthless tomorrow. By way of introspection, 
let us see what principles of equity toward Man and Nature we would lay 
down as the basis of our action if we were called to the bench. Named 
in logical sequence they would be about as follows : 

1. Any private game "preserve" that is maintained chiefly as a 

"Private Game Preserves and their Future mi the United States," hy T. R. Pahner, 
United vStates Department of Agriculture, 1910. 



PRIVATE GAMIi PRESERVES 



363 




EGRETS AND HERONS IN SANCTUARY ON MARSH ISLAND 



slaughter-ground for wild j^^ame, either Ijirds or mammals, may become 
detrimental to the interests of the people at large. 

2. It is not neeessarily the duty of any state to provide for the main- 
tenance of private death-traps for the wholesale slaughter of migratory 
game. 

3. x'\n oppressive monopoly in the slaughter of migratory game is 
detrimental to the interests of the public at large, the same as any other 
mono])oly. 

4. Every de facto game preserve, maintained for the preservation of 
wild life rather than for its slaughter, is an institution beneficial to the 
public at large, and therefore entitled to legal rights and privileges above 
and beyond all which may rightly be accorded to the so-called "pre- 
serves" that are maintained as killing-grounds. 

5. The law may justly discriminate between the actual game jjreserve 
and the mere killing-ground. 

6. Whenever a killing-ground becoines a public burden, it may be 
abated, the same as any other public infliction. 

In private game preserves the time has arrived wlien lawmakers and 
judges must begin to apjjly the blood-test, and separate the true from the 
false. And at every step, the welfare of the icild life involved must be 
given full consideration. No men, nor body of men, should be permitted 
to i)ractice methods that spell extermination. 



CHAPTER XXXIX 
BRITISH GAME PRESERVES IN AFRICA AND AUSTRALIA 

This brief chapter is offered as an object-lesson to the world at large. 

In the early days of America, the founders of our states and territories 
gave little heed, or none at all, to the preservation of wild life. Even if 
they thought of that duty, undoubtedly they felt that the game would 
always last, and that they had no time for such sentimental side issues 
as the making of game preserves. They were coping with troubles and 
perplexities of many kinds, and it is not to be wondered at that up to 
forty years ago, real game protection in America went chiefly by default. 

In South Africa, precisely the same conditions have prevailed until 
recent times. The early colonists were kept so busy shooting lions and 
making farms that not one game preserve was made. If any men can 
be excused from the work and worry of preserving game, and making 
preserves, it is those who spend their lives pioneering and state-building 
in countries like Africa. Men who continually have to contend with 
disease, bad food, rains, insect pests, dangerous wild beasts and native 
cussedness may well claim that they have troubles enough, without going 
far into campaigns to preserve wild animals in countries where animals 
are plentiful and cheap. It is for this reason that the people of Alaska 
can not be relied upon to preserve the Alaskan game. They are busy 
with other things that are of more importance to them. 

In May, 1900, representatives of the great powers owning territory 
in Africa held a conference in the interests of the wild-animal life of that 
continent. As a result a Convention was signed by which those powers 
bound hemselves "to make provision for the prevention of further undue 
destruction of wild game." The principles laid down for universal 
observance were as follows: 

1. Sparing of females and immature animals. 

2. The establishment of close seasons and game sanctuaries. 

3. Absolute protection of rare species. 

4. Restrictions on export for trading purposes of skins, horns, tusks, etc. 

5. Prohibition of the use of pits, snares and game traps. 

The 'brave and hardy men who are making for the British people a 
grand empire in Africa probably are greater men than far-distant people 
realize. To them, the white man's burden of game preservation is 
accepted as all in the day's work. A mere handful of British civil officers, 
strongly aided by the Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the 
British Empire, have carved out and set aside a great chain of game 
preserves reaching all the way from Swaziland and the Transvaal to 
Khartoum. Taken either collectively or separately, it represents grand 



BRITISH CAME PRESERVES IN AFRICA AND AUSTRALIA 365 

work, characteristic of the greatest colonizers on earth. Those preserves 
are worthy stones in the foundation of what one day will be a great 
British empire in Africa. The names of the men who proposed them 
and wrought them out should, in some way, be imperishably connected 
with them as their founders, as the least reward that Posterity can bestow. 

In Major J. Stevenson-Hamilton's fine work, "Animal Life in Africa,"* 
the author has been at much pains to publish an excellent series of maps 
showing the locations of the various British game preserves in Africa, 
and the map published herewith has been based chiefly on that work. 
It is indeed fortunate for the wild life of Africa that it has today so 
powerful a champion and exponent as this author, the warden of the 
Transvaal Game Preserves. 

Events move so rapidly that up to this date no one, so far as I am 
aware, has paused long enough to make ana publish an annotated list 
of the African game preserves. Herein I have attempted to begin that 
task myself, and I regret that at this distance it is impossible for me to 
set down under the several titles the names of the men who made these 
preserves possible, and actually founded them. 

To thoughtful Americans I particularly commend this list as a showing 
of the work of men who have not waited until the game had been prac- 
tically exterminated before creating sanctuaries in which to preserve it. 
In view of these results, how trivial and small of soul seems the mercenary 
efforts of the organized wool-growers of Montana to thwart our plan 
to secure a paltry fifteen square miles of grass lands for the rugged and 
arid Snow Creek Antelope Preserve that is intended to help save a 
valuable species from quick extermination. 

At this point I must quote the views of a high authority on the status 
of wild life and game preserves in Africa. The following is from Major 
Stevenson-Hamilton's book. 

"It is a remarkable phenomenon in human aftairs how seldom the 
experience of others seems to turn the scale of action. There are, I take 
it, very few farmers, in the Cape Colony, the Orange Free State, or the 
Transvaal, who woidd not be glad to see an adequate supply of game 
upon their land. Indeed, the writer is constantly dealing with applica- 
tions as to the possibility of reintroducing various species from the game 
reserves to private farms, and only the question of expense and the 
difficulty of transport have, up to the present, prevented this being done 
on a considerable scale. When, therefore, the relatively small populations 
of such protectorates as are still well stocked with game are heard airily 
discussing the advisability of getting rid of it as quickly as possible, one 
realizes how often vain are the teachings of history, and how well-nigh 
hopeless it is to quote the result of similar action elsewhere. It remains 
only to trust that things may be seen in truer perspective ere it is too late, 
and that those in whose temporary charge it is may not cast recklessly 
away one of nature's most splendid assets, one, moreover, which one 3 
lightly discarded, can never by any possibility, be regained. 

♦Published by Heineniaiin, London, 1912. 



366 



OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 




THE MOST IMPORTANT GAME PRESERVES OF AFRICA 
The Numbers Refer to Corresponding Numbers in the Text 

"It is idle to say that the advance of civiHzation must necessarily 
mean the total disappearance of all wild animals. This is one of those 
glib fallacies which flows only too readily from unthinking hps. Civili- 
zation in its full sense — not the advent of a few scattered pioneers — of 
course, implies their restriction, especially as regards purely grass- 
feeding species, within certain definite bounds, both as regards numbers 
and sanctuaries. But this is a very different thing from wholesale 
destruction, that a few more or less deserving individuals may receive 
some small pecuniary benefit, or gratify their taste for slaughter to the 
detriment of everyone else who may come after. The fauna of an empire 
is the property of that etnpire as a whole, and not of the small portion of it 
where the animals may happen to exist; and while full justice and encourage- 
ment must he given to the farmer and pioneer, neither should he permitted 
to entirely demolish for his own advantage resources which, strictly speaking, 
are not his own.'" — ("Animal Life in Africa," p. 24.) 



BRITISH GAME PRESERVES IN AFRICA AND A USTRALIA 3G7 

African Game Preserves 

British East Africa: 

1.* The Athi Plains Preserve. — This is situated between the Uganda 
Railway and the boundary of German East Africa. Its northern bound- 
ary is one mile north of the railway track. It is about 215 miles long east 
and west by 105 miles from north to south, and its area is about 13,000 
square miles. It is truly a great preserve, and worthy of the plains fauna 
that it is specially intended to perpetuate. 

2. The Jubaland Preserve. — This preserve lies northwest of Mount 
Kenia. Its southwestern corner is near Lake Baringo, the Laikipia 
Escarpment is its western boundary up to Mt. Nyiro, and from that point 
its northern boundary runs 225 miles to Marsabit Lake. From that 
point the boundary runs south-by-west to the Guaso Nyiro River, which 
forms the eastern half of the southern boundary. Its total area appears 
to be about 13,000 square miles. 

In addition to the two great preserves described above the government 
of British East Africa has established on the Uasin Gishu Plateau a cen- 
trally located sanctuary for elands, roan antelopes and hippopotamii. 
There is also a small special rhinoceros preserve about fifty miles south- 
eastward of Nairobi, around Kiu station, on the railway. 

Egyptian Sudan: 

3. A great nameless sanctuary for wild life exists on the eastern bank 
of the Nile, comprising the whole territory between the main stream, 
the Blue Nile and Abyssinia. Its length (north and south) is 215 miles, 
and its width is about 125 miles; which means a total area of about 
26,875 square miles. Natives and others hving within this sanctuary 
may hunt therein — if they can procure licenses. 

Somaliland: 

4. Hargeis Reserve, about 1,800 square miles. 

5. Mirso Reserve, about 300 square miles. 

Uganda: 

6. Budonga Forest Reserve. — This small reserve cml)races the whole 
eastern shore and hinterland of Lake Albert Nyanza. and is shaped like 
a new moon. 

7. Toro Reserve. — This small reserve lies between Lakes Albert 
Nyanza and Albert Edward Nyanza, touching both. 

Nyasaland, or the British Central Africa Protectorate. — A 
small territory, but remarkably well stocked with game. 

8. Elephant Marsh Preserve. — A small area in the extreme southern 
end of the Protectorate, on both sides of the Shire River, chiefly for buffalo. 

9. Angoniland Reserve. — This was created especially to preserve 
about one thousand elephants. It is forty miles west of the south- 
western arm of Lake Nyasa. 

♦These numbers refer to corresponding iiunil)ers on tlu- map of Africa. 



368 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Transvaal : 

10. Sahi-Singwitza-Pongola Preserve. — This great preserve occupies 
the whole region between the Drakenberg Mountains and the Lebombo 
Hills. Its total area is about 10,500 square miles. It lies in a compact 
block about 210 miles long by 50 miles wide, along the Portuguese 
border. 

11. Rustenburg Reserve. — This is situated at the head of the Limpopo 
River, and covers about 3,500 square miles. 

Swaziland: 

12. The Swaziland Reserve contains about 1,750 square miles, and 
occupies the southwestern corner of Swaziland. 

Rhodesia: 

13. The Nvueru Marsh Game Reserve is in northwestern Rhodesia, 
bordering the Congo Free State. The description of its local boundaries 
is quite unintelligible outside of Rhodesia. 

Luangwa Reserve. — The locality of this reserve cannot be determined 
from the official description, which gives no clue to its shape or size. 

Game Preserves in Australasia 
New Zealand: 

Little Barrier Island in the north, and Resolution Island, m the south; 
and concerning both, details are lacking. 

Australia: 

Kangaroo Island, near Adelaide, South Australia, is 400 miles north- 
west of Melbourne. Of the total area of this rather large island of 300 
square miles, 140 square miles have been set aside as a game preserve, 
chiefly for the preservation of the mallee bird (Lipoa occelata). It is 
believed that eventually the whole island will become a wild-life sanctuary, 
and it would seem that this can not be consummated a day too soon for 
the vanishing wild life. 

Wilson s Promontory, Adelaide, is a peninsula well suited to the 
preservation of wild life, especially birds, and it is now a sanctuary. 

Many private bird refuges have been created in Australia. 
Tasmania: 

Eleven Bird Refuges have been created, with a total area of 26,000 
acres, — an excellent record for Tasmania! 

Freycinefs Peninsula. — At present this wild-life sanctuary is not 
adequately protected from illicit hunting and trapping; but its full 
protection is now demanded, and no doubt this soon will be provided 
by the government. I am informed that this offers a golden opportunity 
to secure a fine wild-life sanctuary at ridiculously small cost to the public. 
The whole world is interested in the preservation of the remarkable 
fauna of Tasmania. The extermination of the thylacirle would be a 
zoological calamity; but it is impending. 



CHAPTER XL 
BREEDING GAME AND FUR IN CAPTIVITY 

Game Breeding. — The breeding of game in captivity for sale in the 
markets of the world is just as legitimate as the breeding of domestic 
species. This applies equally to mammals, birds, reptiles and fishes. 
It is the duty of the nation and the state to foster such industries and 
facilitate the marketing of their products without any unnecessary 
formalities, delays or losses to producers or to purchasers. 

Already this principle has been established in several states. Without 
going into the records, it is safe to say that Colorado was the pioneer in 
the so-called "more-game" movement, about 1899; but there is one 
person who would like to have the world believe that it started in the 
state of New York, about 1909. The idea is not quite as "old as the 
hills," but the application of it in the United States dates back through a 
considerable vista of years. 

The laws of Colorado providing for the creation of private game 
preserves and the marketing of their product under a tagging system, 
are very elaborate, and they show a sincere desire to foster an industry 
as yet but slightly developed in this country. The laws of New York are 
much more simple and easy to understand than those of Colorado. 

There is one important principle now fully recognized in the New 
York laws for game breeding that other states will do well to adopt. It 
is the fact that certain kinds of wild game can not be bred and reared in 
captivity on a commercial basis; and this being true, it is clearly against 
public policy to provide for the sale of any such species. Why provide 
for the sale of preserve-bred grouse and ducks which we know can not be 
bred and reared in confinement in marketable numbers? For example, 
if we may judge by the numerous experiments that thus far have been 
made, — as we certainly have a right to do, — no man can successfully 
breed and rear in captivity, on a commercial basis, the canvasback duck, 
teal, ]3intail duck, ruffed grouse or quail. This being the case, no amount 
of clamor from game dealers and their allies ever should induce any state 
legislature to provide for the sale of any of those species until it has been 
fully demonstrated that they have been and can be bred in captivity in large 
numbers. The moment the markets of a state are thrown open to these 
impossible species, from that moment the state game wardens must make 
a continuous struggle to prevent the importation and sale of those birds 
contrary to law. This proposition is so simple that every honest man 
can see it. 

All that any state legislature may rightfully be asked to do is to 



370 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

provide for the sale, under tags, of those species which we know can be 
bred in captivity in large numbers. 

When the Bayne law was drafted, its authors considered with the 
utmost care the possibilities in the breeding of game in the United States 
on a commercial basis. It was found that as yet only two wild native 
species have been, and can be, reared in captivity on a large scale. These 
are the white-tailed deer and mallard duck. Of foreign species we can 
breed successfully for market the fallow deer, red deer of Europe and some 
of the pheasants of the old world. For the rearing, killing and marketing 
of all these, the Bayne law provides the simplest processes of state super- 
vision that the best game protectors and game breeders of New York 
could devise. The tagging system is expeditious, cheap and effective. 
Practically the only real concession that is required of the game-breeder 
concerns the killing, which must be done in a systematic way, whereby 
a state game warden can visit the breeder's premises and affix the tags 
without any serious sacrifice of time or convenience on either side. The 
tags cost the breeder five cents each, and they pay the cost of the services 
rendered by the state. 

By this admirable system, which is very plainly set forth in the New 
York Conservation Commission's book of game laws, all the wild game 
of New York, and of every other state, is absolutely protected at all times 
against illegal killing and illegal importation for the New York market. 
Now, is it not the duty of Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas 
and every other state to return our compliment by passing similar laws ? 
Massachusetts came up to public expectations at the next session of her 
legislature after the passage of our Bayne law. In 1913, California will 
try to secure a similar act; and we know full well that her ducks, geese, 
quail, grouse and band-tailed pigeon need it very much. If the California 
protectors of wild life succeed in arousing the great quiet inass of people 
in that state, their Bayne bill will be swept through their legislature on a 
tidal wave of popular sentiment. 

Elk. — For people who own wild woodlands near large cities there are 
good profits to be made in rearing white-tailed deer for the market. I 
would also mention elk, but for the fact that every man who rears a fine 
herd of elk quickly becomes so proud of the animals, and so much at- 
tached to them, that he can not bear to have them shot and butchered 
for market! Elk are just as easy to breed and rear as domestic cattle, 
except that in the fall breeding season, the fighting of rival bulls demands 
careful and intelligent management. Concerning the possibilities of 
feeding elk on hay at $25 per ton and declaring an annual profit, I am 
not informed. If the elk require to be fed all the year round, the high 
price of hay and grain might easily render it impossible to Droduce market- 
able three-year-old animals at a profit. 

White-tailed Deer. — Any one who owns from one hundred to one 
thousand acres of wild, brushy or forest-covered land can raise white- 
tailed (or Virginia) deer at a profit. With smaller areas of land, free 
range becomes impossible, and the prospects of commercial profits 



BREEDING GAME AND FUR IN CAPTIVITY 371 

diminish and disappear. In any event, a fenced range is absolutely 
essential; and the best fence is the Page, 88 inches high, all horizontals 
of No. 9 wire, top and bottom wires of No. 7, and the perpendicular tie- 
wires of No. 12. This fence will hold deer, elk, bison and wild horses. 
In large enclosures, the white-tailed deer is hardy and prolific, and when 
fairly cooked its flesh is a great delicacy. In Vermont the average 
weights of the deer killed in that state in various years have been as fol- 
low:— in 1902, 171 lbs.; in 1903, 190 lbs.; in 1905, 198 lbs.; in 1906, 200 
lbs.; in 1907, 196 lbs.; in 1908, 207 lbs.; and in 1909, 155 lbs. The rea- 
son for the great drop in 1909 is yet to be ascertained. 

In 1910, in New York City the wholesale price of whole deer carcasses 
was from 22 to 25 cents per pound. Venison saddles were worth from 
30 to 35 cents per pound. On the bill of fare of a first class hotel, a portion 
of venison costs from $1.50 to $2.50 according?; to the diner's location. 
It is probable that such prices as these will prevail only in the largest 
cities, and therefore they must not be regarded as general. 

Live white-tailed deer can be purchased for breeding purposes at 
prices ranging from $25 to $35 each. A good eastern source of supply is 
Blue Mountain Forest, Mr. Austin Corbin, president (Broadway and 
Cortlandt St., New York). In the West, good stock can be procured 
from the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company, through C. V. R. Townsend, 
Negaunee, Mich, whose preserve occupies the whole of Grand Island, 
Lake Superior. 

The Department of Agriculture has published for free distribution a 
pamphlet entitled "Raising Deer and Other Large Game Animals" in 
the United States, by David E. Lantz, which contains much valuable 
information, although it leaves much unsaid. 

All breeders of deer are cautioned that during the fall and early winter 
months, all adult white-tailed bucks are dangerous to man, and should 
be treated accordingly. A measure of safety can be secured in a large 
park by compelling the deer always to keep at a respectful distance, and 
making no "pets," whatever. Whenever a buck finds his horns and loses 
his fear of man, climb the fence quickly. Bucks in the rutting season 
sometimes seem to go crazy, and often they attack men, wantonly and 
dangerously. The method of attack is to an unarmed man almost irre- 
sistible. The animal lowers his head, stiffens his neck and with terrible 
force drives straight forward for your stomach and bowels. Usually 
there are eight sharp spears of bone to impale you. The best defense 
of an unarmed man is to seize the left antler with the left hand, and with 
the right hand pull the deer's right front foot from under him. Merely 
holding to the horns makes great sport for the deer. He loves that un- 
equal combat. The great desideratum is to put his fore legs out of 
commission, and get him down on his knees. 

Does are sometimes dangerous, and inflict serious damage by rising 
on their hind feet and viciously striking with their sharp front hoofs. 
These tendencies in American deer are mentioned here as a duty to per- 
sons who ma}' de.sire to breed deer for profit. 



372 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

The Red Deer of Europe. — Anyone who has plenty of natural 
forest food for deer and a good market within fair range, may find the 
European red deer a desirable species. It is of size smaller, and more 
easily managed, than the wapiti; and is more easily marketed because 
of its smaller size. As a species it is hardy and prolific, and of course 
its venison is as good as that of any other deer. Live specimens for stock- 
ing purposes can be purchased of S. A. Stephan, Agent for Carl Hagen- 
beck, Cincinnati Zoological Gardens, or of Wenz & Mackensen, Yard- 
ley, Pa., at prices ranging from $60 to $100 each, according to size 
and age. At present the supply of specimens in this country on hand 
for sale is very small. 

The Fallow Deer. — This species is the most universal park deer of 
Europe. It seems to be invulnerable to neglect and misuse, for it has 
persisted through countless generations of breeding in captivity, and 
the abuse of all nations. In size it is a trifie smaller than our white- 
tailed deer, with spots in summer, and horns that are widely flattened 
at the extremities in a very interesting way. It is very hardy and prolific, 
but of course it can not stand everything that could be put upon it. It 
needs a dry shed in winter, red clover hay and crushed oats for winter 
food; and no deer should be kept in mud. As a commercial proposition 
it is not so meaty as the white-tail, but it is less troublesome to keep. The 
adult males are not such vicious or dangerous fighters as white-tail 
bucks. Live specimens are worth from $50 to $75. The Essex County 
Park Commissioners (Orange, New Jersey) have had excellent success 
with this species. In 1906 they purchased twenty-five does and four 
bucks and placed them in an enclosure of 150 acres, on a wooded moun- 
tain-side. In 1912 they had 150 deer, and were obliged to take measures 
for a disposal of the surplus. Messrs. Wenz & Mackensen, keep an 
almost continuous supply of fallow deer on hand for sale. 

The Indian Sambar Deer. — I have long advocated the introduction 
in the southern states, wherever deer can he protected, of this great, hulking, 
animated venison-factory. While I have not delved deeply into the 
subject of weight and growth, I feel sure from casual observations of the 
growth of about twenty-five animals that this species produces more 
venison during the first two years of its life than any other deer with 
which I am acquainted. I regard it as the greatest venison-producer 
of the whole Deer Family; and I know that is a large order. The size 
of a yearling is almost absurd, it is so great for an animal of tender years. 
When adult, the species is for its height very large and heavy. As a 
food-producing animal, located in the southern hill forests and taking 
care of itself, "there's millions in it!" But it must be kept under fence; 
for in no southern (or northern) state would any such mass of juicy wild 
meat long be permitted to roam at large unkilled. Through this species 
I believe that a million acres of southern timber lands, now useless except 
for timber growth, could be made very productive in choice venison. 
The price woiild be, — a good fence, and protection from poachers. 

The Indian sambar deer looks like a short-legged big-bodied under- 
study of our American elk. It breeds well in captivity, and it is of quiet 



BREEDING GAME AND FUR IN CAPTIVITY 373 

and tractable disposition. It can not live in a country where the tem- 
perature goes down to 25° F. and remains there for long periods. It would, 
I am firmly convinced, do well all along the Gulf coast, and if acclimatized 
along the Gulf, with the lapse of time and generations it would become 
more and more hardy, grow more hair, and push its way northward, 
until it reached the latitude of Tennessee. But then, in a wild state it 
could not be protected from poachers. As stated elsewhere. Dr. Ray V. 
Pierce has successfully acclimatized and bred this species in his St. 
Vincent Island game preserve, near Apalachicola, Florida. More 
than that, the species has crossed with the white-tailed deer of the 
Island. 

Living specimen of the Indian Sambar deer are worth from $125 to 
$250, according to size and other conditions. Just at present it seems 
difficult for Americans to procure a sufficient number of males! We 
have had very bad luck with several males that we attempted to im- 
port for breeding purposes. 

The Mallard Duck. — A great many persons have made pensistent 
attempts to breed the canvasback, redhead, mallard, black duck, pintail, 
teal and other species, on a commercial basis. So far as I am aware the 
mallard is the only wild duck that has been bred in sufficient numbers 
to slaughter for the markets. The wood duck and mandarin can be bred 
in fair numbers, but only sufficient to supply the demand for living birds, 
for park purposes. One would naturally suppose that a species as closely 
allied to the mallard as the black duck is known to be, would breed like 
the mallard; but the black duck is so timid and nervous about nesting 
as to be almost worthless in captivity. All the species named above, 
except the mallard, must at present, and in general, be regarded as 
failures in breeding for the market. 

Of all American ducks the common mallard is the most persistent 
and successful breeder. It quickly becomes accustomed to captivity, it 
enjoys park life, and when given even half a chance it will breed and 
rear its young. 

Unquestionably, the mallard duck can be reared in captivity in 
numbers limited only by the extent of breeder's facilities. The amount 
of net profit that can be realized depends wholly upon the business acu- 
men and judgment displayed in the management of the flock. The total 
amount of knowledge necessary to success is not so very great, but at 
the same time, the exercise of a fair amount of intelligence, and also 
careful diligence, is absolutely necessary. Naturally the care and food 
of the flock must not cost extravagantly, or the profits will inevitably 
disappear. 

As a contribution to the cause of game-breeding for the inarket, and 
the creation of a new industry of value, Mr. L. S. Crandall and the 
author wrote for the New York State Conservation Commission a 
pamphlet on "Breeding Mallard Ducks for Market." Copies of it can 
be procured of our State Conservation Commission at Albany, by 
enclosing ten cents in stamps. 



374 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Breeding Fur-Bearing Animals 

When hundreds of persons wrote to me asking for hterature on the 
breeding of fur-bearing animals for profit, for ten years I was compelled 
to tell them that there was no such literature. During the past three 
years a few offerings have been made, and I lose not a moment in listing 
them here. 

''Life Histories of Northern /inmials, by Ernest T. Seton (Charles 
Scribner's Sons, 2 volumes, $18), contains carefully written and valuable 
chapters on fox farming, skunk farming, marten farming, and mink 
farming, and other valuable life histories of the fur-bearing animals of 
North America. 

Rod and Gun in Canada, a magazine for sportsmen published by 
W. J. Taylor, Woodstock, Ontario, contained in 1912 a series of articles 
on ''The Culture of Black and Silver Foxes," by R. B. and L. V. Croft. 
Country Life in America has published a number of illustrated articles 
on fox and skunk farming. 

With its usual enterprise and forethought, the Biological Survey of 
the Department of Agriculture has published a valuable pamphlet of 
22 pages on "Silver Fox Farming," by Wilfred H. Osgood, copies of 
which can be procured by addressing the Secretary of Agriculture. In 
consulting that contribution, however, it must be borne in mind that 
just now, in fox farming, history is being made more rapidly than here- 
tofore. 

I do not mean to say that the above are the only sources of informa- 
tion on fur-farming for profit, but they are the ones that have most 
impressed me. The files of all the journals and magazines for sportsmen 
contain numerous articles on this subject, and they should be carefully 
consulted. 

Black-Fox Farming. — The ridiculous prices now being paid in Lon- 
don for the skins of black or ' ' silver ' ' foxes has created in this country a 
small furore over the breeding of that color-phase of the red fox. The 
prices that actually have been obtained, both for skins and for live 
animals for breeding purposes, have a strong tendency to make people 
crazy. Fancy paying $12,000 in real money for one pair of live black 
foxes! That has been done, on Prince Edward Island, and $10,000 per 
pair is now regarded as a bargain-counter figure. 

On Prince Edward Island, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, black-fox 
breeding has been going on for ten years, and is now on a successful basis. 
One man has made a fortune in the business, and it is rumored that a 
stock company is considering the purchase of his ten-acre fox ranch at 
a fabulous figure. The enormous prices obtainable for live black foxes, 
male or female, make diamonds and rubies seem cheap and common- 
place; and it is no wonder that enterprising men are tempted to enter 
that industry. 

The price of a black fox is one of the wonders of a recklessly ex- 
travagant and whimsical age. All the fur-wearing world knows very well 



BREEDING GAME AND FUR IN CAPTIVITY 375 

that fox fur is one of the poorest of furs to withstand the wear and tear 
of actual use. About two seasons' hard wear are enough to put the best 
fox skin on the wane, and three or four can be guaranteed to throw it into 
the discard. Even the finest black fox skin is nothing superlatively 
beautiful! A choice "cross" fox skin costing only $50 is /ar more beauti- 
ful, as a color proposition; but London joyously pays $2,500 or $3,000 
for a single black-fox skin, to wear! 

Of course, all such fads as this are as ephemeral as the butterflies of 
summer. The Russo-Japanese war quickly reduced the value of Alaskan 
blue foxes from $30 to $18; and away went the Alaskan fox farms! A 
similar twist of Fortune's fickle wheel may in any year send the black fox 
out of royal favor, and remove the bottom from the business of producing 
it. Let us hope, however, that the craze for that fur will continue; for 
we like to see our friends and neighbors make good profits. 

Pheasant Rearing. — This subject is so well understood by game- 
breeders, and there is already so much good literature available regarding 
it, it is not necessary that I should take it up here. 



CHAPTER XLI 

TEACHING WILD LIFE PROTECTION TO THE YOUNG 

Thousands of busy and burdened men and women are to-day striving 
hard, early and late, to promote measures that will preserve the valuable 
wild life of the world. They desire to leave to the boys and girls of to- 
morrow a good showing of the marvelous bird and animal forms that 
make the world beautiful and interesting. They are acting on the prin- 
ciple that the wild life of to-day is not ours, to destroy or to keep as we 
choose, but has been given to us in trust, partly for our benefit and partly 
for those who come after us and audit our accounts. They believe that 
we have no right to squander and destroy a wild-life heritage of priceless 
value which we have done nothing to create, and which is not ours to 
destroy. 

Duty of Parents. — This being the case, it is very necessary that the 
young people of to-day should be taught, early and often, the virtue and 
the necessity of wild-life protection. There is no reason that the boy of 
to-day should not take up his share of the common burden, just as soon 
as he is old enough to wander alone through the woods. Let him be 
taught in precise terms that he must not rob birds' nests, and that he must 
not shoot song-birds, woodpeckers and kingfishers with a 22-calibre rifle, 
or any other gun. At this moment there lies upon my side table a vicious 
little 22-calibre rifle that was taken from two boys who were camping 
in the woods of Connecticut, and amusing themselves by shooting val- 
uable insectivorous birds. Now those boys were not wholly to blame 
for what they were doing; but their fathers and mothers were very much 
to blame! They should have been taught at the parental knee that it is 
very wrong to kill any bird except a genuine game bird, and then only 
in the lawful open season. Those two fathers paid $10 each for having 
failed in their duty; and it served them right; for they were the real 
culprits. 

Small-calibre rifles are becoming alarmingly common in the hands of 
boys. Parents must do their duty in the training of their boys against 
bird-shooting! It is a very serious matter. A million boys who roam the 
fields with small rifles without having been instructed in protection, can 
destroy, an appalling number of valuable birds in the course of a year. 
Some parents are so slavishly devoted to their children that they wish 
them to do everything they please, and be checked in nothing. Such 
parents constitute one of the pests of society, and a drag upon the happi- 
ness of their own children ! It is now the bounden duty of each parent to 
teach each one of his or her children that the time has come when the 



TEACHING WILD LIFE PROTECTION TO THE YOUNG 'ill 

resources of nature, and especially wild life, must be conserved. To per- 
mit boys to grow up and acquire <:^ns without this knowledge is very 
WTong. 

The Duty of Teachers and Schools. — A great deal of "nature 
study" is being taught in the public schools of the United States. That 
the young people of our land should be taught to appreciate the works of 
nature, and especially animal life and plant life, is very desirable. Thus 
far, however, there is a screw loose in the system, and that is the shortage 
in definite, positive instruction regarding individual duty toward the wild 
creatures, great and small. Along with their nature studies all our school 
children should be taught, in the imperative mood: 

1. That it is wrong to disturb breeding birds, or rob birds' nests; 

2. That it is wrong to destroy any harmless living creature not 
properly classed as game, except it be to preserve it in a museum ; 

3. That it is no longer right for civilized man to look upon wild game 
as necessary food; because there is plenty of other food, and the rem- 
nant of game can not withstand slaughter in that basis; 

4. That the time has come when it is the duty of every good citizen 
to take an active, aggressive part in preventing the destruction of wild 
life, and in promoting its preservation; 

5. That every boy and girl over twelve years of age can do something 
in this cause, and finally, 

6. That protection and encouragement will bring back the almost 
vanished birds. 

We call upon all boards of education, all principals of schools and all 
teachers to educate our boys and girls, constantly and imperatively, 
along those lines. Teachers, do not say to your pupils, — "It is right and 
nice to protect birds," but say: — "It is your Duty to protect all harmless 
wild things, and you must do it!'' 

In a good cause, there is great virtue in " Must." 

Really, we are losing each year an immense amount of available wild- 
life protection. The doctrine of imperative individual duty never yet 
has been taught in our schools as it should be taught. A few teachers 
have, indeed, covered this ground; but I am convinced that their pro- 
portion is mighty small. 

Text Books. — The writers of the nature study text books are very 
much to blame because nine-tenths of the time this subject has been 
ignored. The situation has not been taken seriously, save in a few cases, 
by a very few authors. I am glad to report that in 1912 there was 
pubhshed a fine text book by Professor James W. Peabody, of the Morris 
High School, New York, and Dr. Arthur E. Hunt, in which from begin- 
ning to end the duty to protect wild life is strongly insisted upon. 
It is entitled "Elementary Biology; Plants, Animals and Man." 

Hereafter, no zoological or nature study text book should be given a 
place in any school in America unless the author of it has done his full 
share in setting forth the duty of the young citizen toward wild life. Were 



378 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

I a member of a board of education I wotild seek to establish and enforce 
this requirement. To-day, any author who will presume to write a text 
book of nature study or zoology without knowing and doing his duty 
toward our vanishing fauna, is too ignorant of wild life and too careless 
of his duty toward it, to be accepted as a safe guide for the young. The 
time for criminal indifference has gone by. Hereafter, every one who is 
not for the preservation of wild life is against it • and it is time to separate 
the sheep from the goats. 

From this time forth, the preservation of our fauna should be regarded 
as a subject on which every candidate for a teacher's certificate should 
undergo an examination before receiving authority to teach in a public 
school. The candidate should be required to know why the preservation 
of birds is necessary ; why the slaughter of wild life is wrong and criminal ; 
the extent to which wild birds and mammals return to us and thrive 
under protection; why wild game is no longer a legitimate food supply; 
why wild game should not be sold, and why the feathers of wild birds 
(other than game birds) never should be used as millinery ornaments. 

As sensible Americans, and somewhat boastful of our intelligence, we 
should put the education of the young in wild-life protection on a rational 
business basis. 

StATE Efforts. — In several of our states, systematic efforts to educate 
children in their duty toward wild life are already being made. To this 
end, an annual "Bird Day" has been established for state-wide observ- 
ance. This splendid idea is now legally in force in the following states: 

California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, 
Ohio and Wisconsin. 

Bird Day is also more or less regularly observed, though not legally 
provided for, in New York, Indiana, Colorado and Alabama, and locally 
in some cities of Pennsylvania. Usually the observance of the day is 
combined with that of Arbor Day, and the date is fixed by proclamation 
of the Governor. 

Alabama and Wisconsin regularly issue elaborate and beautiful 
Arbor and Bird Day annuals; and Illinois, and possibly other states, 
have issued very good publications of this character. 

The Phillips Educational Campaign for the Birds. — Quite re- 
cently there has come under my notice an episode in the education of 
school children that has given the public profound satisfaction. I cite it 
here as an object lesson for pan- America. 

In Carrick, Pennsylvania, just across the Monongahela River from 
the city of Pittsburgh, lives John M. Phillips, State Game Commissioner, 
nature-lover, sportsman and friend of man. He is a man who does things, 
and gets results. Goat Mountain Park (450 square miles), in British 
Columbia, to-day owes its existence to him, for without his initiative and 
labor it would not have been established. It was the first game preserve 
of British Columbia. 

Three years ago, Mr. Phillips became deeply impressed by the idea 



TEACHING WILD LIFE PRUTECTIOX TO THE YOUNG 379 




BIRD DAY AT CARRICK, PA. 
Marching Behind the Governor 



that one of the best ways in the world to protect the wild life, both of 
to-day and the future, would be in teachinj.^ school children to love it and 
protect it. His fertile brain and open check-book soon devised a method 
for his home city. His theory was that by givin*.^ the children something 
to do, not only in protecting but in actually bringing back the birds, much 
might be accomplished. 

In studying the subject of bringing back the birds, he found that 
the Russian mulberry is one of the finest trees in the world as a purvej'or 
of good fruit for many kinds of birds. The tree does not much resemble 
our native mill berry, but is equally beautiful and interesting. "The 
fruit is not a long berry, nor is it of a purj^lc color, but it grows from buds 
on the limbs and twigs something after the manner of the pussy-willow. 
It is smaller, of light color and has a very distinct flavor. The most 
striking peculiarity about the fruit is that it keeps on ripening during 
two months or more, new berries appearing daily while others are rij^cn- 
ing. This is why it is such good bird food. Nor is it half bad for folks, 
for the berries are good to look at and to eat, either with cream or without, 
and to make pies that will set any sane boy's mouth a-watering at sight." 
— (Erasmus Wilson). 



380 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

Everyone knows the value of sweet cherries, both to birds and to 
children. 

Mr. Phillips decided that he wotdd give away several hundred bird 
boxes, and also several hundred sweet cherry and Russian mulberry 
trees. The first gift distribution was made in the early spring of 1909. 
Another followed in 1910, but the last one was the most notable. 

On April 11, 1912, Carrick had a great and glorious Bird Day. Mr. 
Phillips was the author of it, and Governor Tener the finisher. On that 
day occurred the third annual gift distribution of raw materials designed 
to promote in the breasts of 2,000 children a love for birds and an active 
desire to protect and increase them. Mr. Phillips gave away 500 bird 
boxes, 500 sweet cherry trees and 200 mulberry trees. The sun shone 
brightly, 500 flags waved in Carrick, the Governor made one of the 
best speeches of his life, and Erasmus Wilson, faithful friend of the birds, 
wrote this good story of the occasion for the Gazette-Times, of Pittsburgh: 

The Governor was there, and the children, the bird-boxes, and the young trees. 
And was there ever a brighter or more fitting day for a children and bird jubilee! The 
scene was so inspiring that Gov. Tener made one of the best speeches of his life. 

The distribution of several hundred cherry and mulberry trees was the occasion, and 
the beautiful grounds of the Roosevelt school, Carrick, was the scene. 

Mr. John M. Phillips, sane sportsman and enthusiastic friend of the birds, has been 
looking forward to this as the culmination of a scheme he has been working on for years, 
and he was more than pleased with the outcome. The intense delight it afforded him 
more than repaid him for all it has cost in all the years past. 

But it was impossible to tell who were the more delighted, — he, or the Governor, or 
the children, or the visitors who were so fortunate as to be present. County Superin- 
tendent of Schools Samuel Hamilton was simply a mass of delight. And how could he 
be otherwise, surrounded as he was by 2,000 and more children fairly quivering with 
delight? 

Children will care for and defend things that are their very own, fight for them and 
stand guard over them. Realizing this Mr. Phillips undertook to show them how they 
could have birds all their own. Being clever in devising schemes for achieving things 
most to be desired, he began giving out bird-boxes to those who would agree to put them 
up, and to watch and defend the birds when they came to make their homes with them. 
And he found that no more faithful sentinel ever stood on guard than the boy who had 
a bird-house all his own. 

Here was the solution to the vexed problem. Provide boxes for those who would 
agree to put them up, care for the birds, and study their habits and needs. The children 
agreed at once, and the birds did not object, so Mr. Phillips had some hundreds, four 
or five, blue-bird and wren boxc-s constructed during the past winter. These were passed 
out some weeks ago to any boys or girls who would present an order signed by their 
parents, and countersigned by the principal of the school. 

He knows enough about a boy to know that he does not prize the things that come 
without effort, nor will he become deeply interested in anything for which he is not held 
more or less responsible. Hence the advantage in having him write an order, have it 
indorsed by his parents, and vouched for by his school principal. 

That he had struck the right scheme was proven by the avidity with which the girls 
and boys rushed for the boxes. The fact that a heavy rain was falling did not dampen 
their ardor for a moment, nor did the fact that they were tramping Mr. Phillips' beauti- 
ful lawn into a field of mud. 

Mr. Phillips, seeing the necessity of providing food for the prospective hosts of birds, 
and wishing to place the responsibility on the boys and girls, offered to provide a cherry 
tree or mulberry tree for every box erected, provided they should be properly planted 
and diligently cared for. 



TEACHING WILD LIFE PROTECTION TO THE YOUNG 381 




DISTRIBUTING BIRD BOXES AND FRUIT TREES 

This was practically the culmination of the most unique bird scheme ever attempted, 
and yesterday was the day set apart for the distribution of these hundreds of fruit trees, 
the products of which are to be divided share and share alike with the birds. 

Nowhere else has such a scheme been attempted, and never before has there been 
just such a day of jubilee. The intense interest manifested by the children, and the 
earnest enthusiasm manifested, leaves no doubt about their carrying out their part of 
the contract. 

Up to date (1912) Mr. Phillips has given away about 1,000 bird 
boxes, 1,500 cherry and Russian mulberry trees, and transformed the 
schools of Carrick into seething masses of children militantly enthusias- 
tic in the protection of birds, and in providing them with homes and 
food. As a final coup, Mr. Phillips has induced the city of Pittsburgh 
to create the office of City Ornithologist, at a salary of $1200 per year. 
The duty of the new officer is to protect all birds in the city from all 
kinds of molestation, especially when nesting; to erect bird-houses, pro- 
vide food for wild birds, on a large scale, and report annually upon the 
increase or decrease of feathered residents and visitors. Mr. Frederic 
S. Webster, long known as a naturalist and practical ornithologist, has 
been appointed to the position, and is now on active duty. 

So far as we are aware, Pittsburgh is the first city to create the office 
of City Ornithologist. It is a happy thought; it will yield good results, 
and other cities will follow Pittsburgh's good example. 



CHAPTER XLII 
THE ETHICS OF SPORTSMANSHIP 

I count it as rather strange that American and EngHsh sportsmen 
have hunted and shot for a century, and until 1908 formulated practically 
nothing to establish and define the ethics of shooting game. Here and 
there, a few unwritten principles have been evolved, and have become 
fixed by common consent; but the total number of these is very few. 
Perhaps this has been for the reason that every free and independent 
sportsman prefers to be a law unto himself. Is it not doubly strange, 
however, that even down to the present year the term " sportsmen " 
never has been defined by a sportsman ! 

Forty years ago, a sportsman might have been defined, according 
to the standards of that period, as a man who hunts wild game for pleas- 
ure. Those were the days wherein no one foresaw the wholesale an- 
nihilation of species, and there were no wilderness game preserves. In 
those days, gentlemen shot female hoofed game, trapped bears if they 
felt like it, killed ten times as much big game as they could use, and no 
one made any fuss whatever about the waste or extermination of wild life. 

Those were the days of ox-teams and broad-axes. To-day, we are 
living in a totally different world, — a world of grinding, crunching, 
pulverizing progress, a world of annihilation of the works of Nature. 
And what is a sportsman to-day? 

A Sportsman is a man who loves Nature, and who in the enjoyment 
of the outdoor life and exploration takes a reasonable toll of Nature's 
wild animals, but not for commercial profit, and only so long as his 
hunting does not promote the extermination of species. 

In view of the disappearance of wild life all over the habitable globe, 
and the steady extermination of species, the ethics of sportsmanship has 
become a matter of tremendous importance. If a man can shoot the last 
living Burchell zebra, or prong-horned antelope, and be a sportsman and 
a gentleman, then we may just as well drop down all bars, and say no 
more about the ethics of shooting game. 

But the real gentlemen-sportsmen of the world are not insensible to 
the duties of the hour in regard to the taking or not taking of game. 
The time has come when canon laws should be laid down, of world-wide 
application, and so thoroughly accepted and promulgated that their 
binding force can not be ignored. Among other things, it is time for a 
list of species to be published which no man claiming to be either a gentle- 
man or a sportsman can shoot for aught else than preservation in a 
public mu-seum. Of coiirse, this list would be composed of the species 



THE ETHICS OF SPORTSMANSHIP 383 

that are threatened with extermination. Of American animals it should 
include the prong-horned antelope, Mexican mountain sheep, all the 
mountain sheep and goats in the United vStates, the California grizzly 
bear, mule deer, West Indian seal and California eleohant seal and 
walrus. 

In Africa that list should include the eland, white rhinoceros, 
blessbok, bontebok, kudu, giraffes and southern elephants, sable antelope, 
rhinoceros south of the Zambesi, leucoryx antelope and whale-headed 
stork. In Asia it should include the great Indian rhinoceros and its 
allied species, the burrhel, the Nilgiri tahr and the gayal. The David 
deer of Manchuria already is extinct in a wild state. 

In Australia the interdiction should include the thylacine or Tas- 
manian wolf, all the large kangaroos , the emu , 1 yre bird and the mallee-bird . 

Think what it would mean to the species named above "if all the 
sportsmen of the world would unite in their defense, both actively and 
passively! It would be to those species a modus vivendi worth while. 

Prior to 1908, no effort (so far as we are aware) ever had been made to 
promote the establishment of a comprehensive and up-to-date code of 
ethics for sportsmen who shoot. A few clubs of men who are hunters of 
big game had expressed in their constitutions a few brief principles for 
the purpose of standardizing their own respective memberships, but 
that was all. I have not taken pains to make a general canvass of sports- 
men's clubs to ascertain what rules have been laid down by any large 
number of organizations. 

The Boone and Crockett Club, of New York and Washington, had 
in its constitution the following excellent article : 

"Article X. The use of steel traps, the making of large bags, the 
killing of game while swimming in water, or helpless in deep snow, and 
the unnecessary killing of females or young of any species of ruminant, 
shall be deemed offenses. Any member who shall commit such offenses 
may be suspended, or expelled from the Club by unanimous vote of the 
Executive Committee." 

In 1906, this Club condemned the use of automatic shotguns in 
hunting as unsportsmanlike. 

The Lewis and Clark Club, of Pittsburgh, has in its constitution, as 
Section 3 of Article 3, the following comprehensive principle: 

' ' The term ' legitimate sport ' means not only the observance of local 
laws, but excludes all methods of taking game other than by fair stalking 
or still hunting." 

At the end of the constitution of this clul) is this declaration, and 
admonition : 

''Purchase and sale of Trophies.- — As the purchase of heads and horns 
establishes a market value, and encourages Indians and others to "shoot 
for sale," often in violation of local laws and always to the detriment of 
the protection of game for legitimate sport, the Lewis and Clark Club 
condemns the purchase or the sale of the heads or horns of any game." 



384 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

In 1906 the Lewis and Clark Club condemned the use of automatic 
shotguns as unsportsmanHke. 

The Shikar Club, of London, a club which contains all the big-game 
hunters of the nobility and gentry of England,* and of which His Majesty 
King George is Honorary President, has declared the leading feature of 
its "Objects" in the following terms: 

"To maintain the standard of sportsmanship. It is not squandered 
bullets and swollen bags which appeal to us. The test is rather in a love of 
forest, mountains and desert; in acquired knowledge of the habits of 
animals; in the strenuous pursuit of a wary and dangerous quarry; in 
the instinct for a well-devised approach to a fair shooting distance; and 
in the patient retrieve of a wounded animal." 

In 1908 the Camp-Fire Club of America formally adopted, as its 
code of ethics, the "Sportsman's Platform" of fifteen articles that was 
prepared by the writer and placed before the sportsmen of America, 
Great Britain and her colonial dependencies in that year. In the book 
of the Club it regularly appears as follows : 

CODE OF L^.Z-'S 

OF THE 

CAMP-FIRE CLUB OF AMERICA 
Proposed by Wm. T. Hornaday and adopted December lo, iqo8 



1. The wild animal life of to-day is not ours, to do with as we please. The 
original stock is given to us in trust, for the benefit both of the present and the 
future. We must render an accounting of this trust to those who come after us. 

2. Judging from the rate at which the wild creatures of North America are now 
being destroyed, fifty years hence there will be no large game left in the United 
States nor in Canada, outside of rigidly protected game preserves. It is therefore 
the duty of every good citizen to promote the protection of forests and wild life 
and the creation of game preserves, while a supply of game remains. Every man 
who finds pleasure in hunting or fishing should be willing to spend both time and 
money in active work for the protection of forests, fish and game. 

3. The sale of game is incompatible with the perpetual preservation of a proper 
stock of game ; therefore it should be prohibited by laws and by public sentiment. 

4. In the settled and civilized regions of North America there is no real neces- 
sity for the consumption of wild game as human food ; nor is there any good excuse 
for the sale of game for food purposes. The maintenance of hired laborers on wild 
game should be prohibited everywhere, under severe penalties. 

5. An Indian has no more right to kill wild game, or to subsist upon it all the 
year round, than any white man in the same locality. The Indian has no inherent 
or God-given ownership of the game of North America, any more than of its mineral 
resources; and he should be governed by the same game laws as white men. 

6. No man can be a good citizen and also be a slaughterer of game or fishes 
beyond the narrow limits compatible with high-class sportsmanship. 

*This organization contains in its list of members the most distinguished names 
in the modern annals of British sport and exploration. Its honorary membership, of 
eight persons, contains the names of three Americans: Theodore Roosevelt, Madison 
Grant and W. T. Hornaday; and of this fact at least one person is extremely proud! 



THE ETHICS OF SPORTSMANSHIP 385 

7. A game-butcher (jr a market-hunter is an undesiral^ile citizen, and should 
be treated as such. 

8. The highest purpose which the killing of wild game and game fishes can 
hereafter be made to serve is in furnishing objects to overworked men for tramping 
and camping trii:)S in the wilds; and the value of wild game as human food should 
no longer be regardeil as an important factor in its pursuit. 

9. If rightly conserved, wild game constitutes a valualile asset to any country 
which possesses it; and it is good statesmanship to protect it. 

10. An ideal hunting trip consists of a good ctjmrade, fine country, and a very 
few trophies per hunter. 

11. In an ideal hunting trip, the death of the game is only an incident; and by 
no means is it really necessary to a successful outing. 

12. The best hunter is the man who finds the mf)st game, kills tlie least, and 
leaves behind him no wotmded animals. 

13. The killing of an animal means the end of its most interesting period. 
When the country is fine, pursuit is more interesting than possession. 

14. The killing of a female hoofed animal, save for special preservation, is to 
be regarded as incompatible with the highest sportsmanship; and it should every- 
where be prohibited by stringent laws. 

15. A particularly fine photograph of a large wild animal in its haunts is 
entitled to more credit than the dead trophy of a similar animal. An animal that 
has been photographed never should be killed, unless j^rcviously wounded in the 
chase. 

This platform has been adopted as a code of ethics by the follow^ing 
organizations, besides the Camp-Fire Club of America: 

The Lewis and Clark Club, of Pittsburgh, John M. Phillips, President. 

The North American Fish and Game Protective Association (Inter- 
national). 

Massachusetts Fish and Game Protective Association, Boston. 

Camp-Fire Club of Michigan, Detroit. 

Rod and Gun Club, Sheridan County, Wyoming. 

The platform has been endorsed and published by The Society for 
the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the British Empire (London), 
which is an endorsement of far-reaching importance. 

Major J. Stevenson-Hamilton, C.ALZ.S., Warden of the Government 
Game Reserves of the Transvaal, South Africa, has adopted the platform 
and given it the most effective endorsement that it has received from any 
single individual. In his great work on game protection in Africa and 
wild-animal lore, entitled "Animal Life in Africa" (and "very highly 
commended" by the Committee on Literary Honors of the Camp-Fire 
Club), he publishes the entire platform, with a depth and cordiality of 
endorsement that is bound to warm the heart of every man who believes 
in the principles laid down in that document. He says, "It should be 
printed on the back of every license that is issued for hunting in Africa." 

I am profoundly impressed by the fact that it is high time for sports- 
men all over the world to take to heart the vital necessity of adopting 
high and clearly defined codes of ethics, to suit the needs of the present 
hour. The days of game abundance, and the careless treatment of wild 
life have gone by, never to return. 



CHAPTER XLIir 

THE DUTY OF AMERICAN ZOOLOGISTS AND EDUCATORS 
TO AMERICAN WILD LIFE 

The publication of this chapter will hardly be regarded as a bid for 
fame, or even popularity, on the part of the author. However, the 
subject can not be ignored simply because it is disagreeable. 

Throughout sixty years, to go no further back, the people of America 
have been witnessing the strange spectacle of American zoologists, as a 
mass, so intent upon the academic study of our continental fauna that 
they seem not to have cared a continental about the destruction of that 
fauna. 

During that tragic period twelve species of North American birds 
have been totally exterminated, twenty-three are almost exterminated, 
and the mammals have fared very badly. 

If "by their works ye shall know them," then no man can say that 
the men referred to have been conspicuous on the firing line in defense 
of assaulted wild life. In their hearts, we know that in an academic way 
the naturalists of America do care about wild-life slaughter, and the 
extermination of species ; and we also know that perhaps fifty American 
zoologists have at times taken an active and serious interest in protection 
work. 

I am speaking now of the general body of museum directors and 
curators ; professors and teachers of zoology in our institutions of learning 
— a legion in themselves; teachers of nature study in our secondary 
schools; investigators and specialists in state and government service; 
the taxidermists and osteologists; and the array of literary people who, 
like all the foregoing, make their bread and butter out of the exploitation 
of wild life. 

Taken as a whole, the people named above constitute a grand army 
of at least five thousand trained, educated, resourceful and influential 
persons. They all depend upon wild life for their livelihood. When they 
talk about living things, the public listens with respectful attention. 
Their knowledge of the value of wild life would be worth something to 
our cause; but thus far it never has been capitalized! 

These people are hard workers; and when they mark out definite 
courses and attainable goals, they know how to get results. Yet what 
do we see? 

For sixty long years, with the exception of the work of a corporal's 
guard of their number, this grand army has remained in camp, partly 



DUTY OF ZOOLOGISTS AND EDUCATORS 387 

neglecting and partly refusing to move upon the works of the enemy. 
For sixty years, with the exception of the non-game-bird law, as a class 
and a mass they have left to the sportsmen of the country the dictating 
of laws for the protection of all the game birds, the mammals and the 
game fishes. When we stop to consider that the game birds alone em- 
brace 154 very important species, the appalling extent to which the zool- 
ogist has abdicated in favor of the sportsman becomes apparent. 

It is a very great mistake, and a wrong besides, for the zoologists of 
the country to abandon the game birds, mammals and fishes of North 
America to the sportsmen, to do with as they please ! Yet that is practic- 
ally what has been done. 

The time was, thirty or forty years ago, when wild life was so abun- 
dant that we did not need to worry about its preservation. That was the 
golden era of study and investigation. That era ended definitely in 1884, 
with the practical extermination of the wild American bison, partly 
through the shameful greed and partly through the neglect of the American 
people. We are now living in the viiddle of the period of Extermination! 
The questions for every American zoologist and every sportsman to an- 
swer now are : Shall the slaughter of species go on to a quick end of the 
period? Shall we give posterity a birdless, gameless, fishless continent, 
or not? Shall we have close seasons, all over the country, for five or ten 
years, or for five hundred years? 

If we are courageous, we will brace up and answer these questions 
now, like men. If we are faint-hearted, and eager for peace at any price, 
then we will sidestep the ugly situation until the destroyers have settled 
it for us by the wholesale extermination of species. 

If the zoologist cares to know, then I will tell him that to-day the 
wild life of the world can be saved by law, but not by sentiment alone! 
You cannot "educate" a poacher, a game-hog, a market-gunner, a mil- 
liner or a vain and foolish woman of fashion. All these must be curbed 
and controlled by law. Game refuges alone will not save the wild life! 
All species of birds, mammals and game fishes of North America must have 
more thorough and far-reaching protection than they now have. 

Do not always take your cue froni the sportsmen, especially regarding 
the enactment of long close sca.sons! If you need good advice, or help 
about drafting a bill, write to Dr. T. S. Palmer, Department of Agricul- 
ture, Washington, and you will receive prompt and valuable assistance. 
The Doctor is a wise man, and there is nothing about protective laws 
that is unknown to him. Go to yoiir state senator and your assemblyman 
with the bills that you know should be enacted into law, and assure them 
that those measures are necessary for the wild life, and beneficial to 98 
per cent of the people who own the wild life. You will be heard with 
respectful attention, in any law-making body that you choose to 
enter. 

People who cannot give time and labor must supply you with money 
for your campaigns. Ask, and you will receive! I have proven this 
manv times. With care and exactness account to vour subscribers for 



388 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

the expenditure of all money placed in your hands, and you will receive 
continuous support. 

In times of great stress, print circulars and leaflets by the ten-thou- 
sand, and get them into the hands of the People, calling for their help. 
Our 42,000 copies of the "Wild Life Call" (sixteen pages) were dis- 
tributed by organizations all over the state of New York, and along 
with Mr. Andrew D. Meloy's letters to the members of the New York 
State League, aroused such a tidal wave of public sentiment against the 
sale of game that the Bayne bill was finally swept through the Legislature 
with only one dissenting vote! And yet, in the beginning not one man 
dared to hope that that very revolutionary measure could by any possibility 
be passed in its first year in New York State, even if it ever could be ! 

It was the aroused Public that did it ! 

This volume has been written (under great pressure) in order to put 
the whole situation before the people of America, including the zool- 
ogists, and to give them some definite information, state by state, 
regarding the needs of the hour. Look at the needs of your own state, in 
the "Roll Call of States," and you will find work for your hand to do. 
Clear your conscience by taking hold now, to do everything that you 
can to stop the carnage and preserve the remnant. Twenty-five or fifty 
years hence, if we have a birdless and gameless continent, let it not be 
said that the zoologists of America helped to bring it about by wicked 
apathy. 

At this juncture, a brief survey of the attitude toward wild life of 
certain American institutions of national reputation will be decidedly 
pertinent. I shall mention only a few of the many that through their 
character and position owe specific duties to this cause. Noblesse oblige! 

The Biological Survey of the U. S. Deoartment of Agriculture is a 
splendid center of activity and initiative in the preservation of our wild 
life. The work of Dr. T. S. Palmer has already been spoken of, and 
thanks to his efforts and direction, the Survey has become the recognized 
special champion of preservation in America. 

The U. S. Forestry Bureau is developing into a very valuable ally, 
and we confidently look forward to the time when its influence in pre- 
servation will be a hundred times more potent than it is to-day. That 
will be when every national forest is made a game preserve, and every forest 
ranger is made a game warden. Let us have both those developments, 
and quickly. 

In 1896 the American Museum of Natural History became a cen- 
ter of activity in bird protection, and the headquarters of the New York 
State Audubon Society. The president of the Museum (Professor 
Henry Fairfield Osborn) is also the president of that organization. 

In several of the New York State movements for bird conservation, 
especially those bearing on the plumage law, the American Museum has 
been active, and at times conspicuous. No one (so I believe) ever 
appealed to the President of the Museum for help on the firing line 
without receiving help of some kind. Unfortunately, however, the pre- 



DUTY OF ZOOLOGISTS AND EDUCATORS 389 

servation of wild life is not one of the declared objects of the American 
Museum corporation, or one on which its officers may spend money, as 
is so freely and even joyously done by the Zoological Society. The 
Museum's influence has been exerted chiefly through the active workers 
of the State Audubon Society, and it was as president of that body that 
Professor Osborn subscribed to the fund that was so largely instrumental 
in creating the New York law against the sale of game. 

There is room for an important improvement in the declared objects 
of the American Museum. To the cause of protection it is a distinct loss 
that that great and powerful institution should be unable to spend 
any money in promoting the preservation of our fauna from annihi- 
lation. An amendment to its constitution is earnestly recommended. 

The activities of the New York Zoological Society began in 1896> 
and they do not require comment here. They have been continuous, 
aggressive and far-reaching, and they have been supported by thousands of 
dollars from the Society's treasury. It is true that the funds available 
for protection work have not represented a great annual sum, such as 
the work demands, but the amount being expended from year to year is 
steadily increasing. In serious emergencies there is always something 
available! During the past two years, to relieve the Society of a portion 
of this particular burden, the director of the Park secured several large 
subscriptions from persons outside the Society, who previously had 
never entered into this work. 

The Milwaukee Public Museum has entered activel^^ and effectively 
into the fight to preserve the birds of Wisconsin from annihilation by 
the saloon-loafer element that three years ago determined to repeal the 
best bird laws on the books, and throw the shooting privilege wide open. 
Mr. Henry L. Ward, Director of the Museum, went to the firing line, 
and remained there. Last year the saloon element thought that they 
had a large majority of the votes in the legislature pledged to vote their 
way. It looked like it ; but when the decent people again rose and de- 
manded justice for the birds, the members of the legislature stood by 
them in large majorities. The spring-shooting, bag-limit and hunting- 
license laws were not repealed. 

The University of Kansas (Lawrence) scored heavily for the cause 
of wild-life protection when in 1908 it gave to the Governor of the state 
the services of a member of its faculty, Professor Lewis Lindsay Dyche, 
who was wanted to fill the position of State Fish and Game Commissioner. 
Professor Dyche proved to be a very live wire, and his activities have 
covered the State of Kansas to its farthest corners. We love him for the 
host of enemies he has made — among the poachers, game-butchers, 
pseudo-" sportsmen " and lawbreakers generally. The men who thought 
they had the "pull" of friendship for lawbreaking were first warned, 
and then as second offenders hauled up to the bar, one and all. The 
more the destroyers try to hound the Commissioner, the more popular 
is he with the great, solid mass of good citizens who bclic\'c in the saving 
of wild life. 



390 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

The Museum of Comparative Zoology has at last made a begin- 
ning in the field of protection. Last winter, while the great battle raged 
over the Wharton no-sale-of-game bill, several members of the Museum 
staff appeared at the hearings and otherwise worked for the success of the 
measure. It was most timely aid, — and very much needed. It is to be 
hoped that that auspicious beginning will be continued from year to year. 
The Museum should keep at least one good fighter constantly in the field. 

The Boston Society of Natural History takes a very active 
part in promoting the preservation of the fauna of Massachusetts, and 
in resisting the attempts of the destroyers to repeal the excellent laws 
now in force. Its members put forth vigorous efforts in the great cam- 
paign of 1912. 

The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences is well represented 
in the field of protection by Director Franklin W. Hooper, now president 
of the American Bison Society, and an earnest promoter of the per- 
petuation of the bison. When the Wind Cave National Bison Herd is 
fully established, in South Dakota, as it practically is already, the chief 
credit for that coup will be due to the unflagging energy and persistence 
of Professor Hooper. 

The Buffalo Academy of Sciences in 1911 entered actively and 
effectively, under the leadership of Dr. Lee H. Smith, into the campaign 
for the Bayne bill. Besides splendid service rendered in western New 
York, Dr. Smith appeared in Albany with a strong delegation in support 
of the bill. 

The University of California was the first institution of learning 
to enter the field of wild-life protection for active, aggressive and perma- 
nent work. W. L. Taylor and Joseph Grinnell, of the University Museum, 
have taken up the fight to save the fauna of California from the dangers 
that now threaten it. 

At this point our enumeration of the activities of American zoological 
institutions comes to an unfortunate end. There are many individuals 
to be named elsewhere, in the roll of honor, but that is another story. I 
am now going to set before the public the names of certain institutions 
largely devoted to zoology and permeated by zoologists, which thus far 
seem to have entirely ignored the needs of our fauna, and which so far we 
know have contributed neither men, money nor encouragement to the 
Army of the Defense. 

Partial List of Institutions Owing Service to Wild Life. 

The United States National Museum contains a large and expensive 
corps of zoological curators and assistant curators, some of whom long 
ago should have taken upon themselves the task of reforming the laws 
of the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland, at their very doors ! 
This museum should maintain at least one man in the field of protection, 
and the existence of the Biological Survey is no excuse for the Museum's 
inactivity. 



DUTY OF ZOOLOGISTS AND EDUCATORS 391 

The Field Museum of Chicago is a great institution, but it appears 
to be inactive in wild-life protection, and indifferent to the fate of our 
wild life. Its influence is greatly needed on the firing line, especially in 
Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and northern Minnesota. First of all the odious 
sale-of-game situation in Chicago should be cleaned up! 

The Philadelphia Academy of Sciences has been represented on the 
A. O. U. Committee on Bird Protection by Mr. Witmcr Stone. The time 
has come when this Academy should be represented on the firing line as 
a virile, wide-awake, self-sacrificing and aggressive force. It is perhaps 
the oldest zoological body in the United States! Its scientific standing 
is unquestioned. Its members must know of the carnage that is going 
on around them, for they are not ignorant men. The Pennsylvania vState 
Game Commission to-day stands in urgent need of active, vigorous and 
persistent assistance from the Philadelphia Academy in the fierce cam- 
paign already in progress for additional protective laws. Will that help 
be given? 

The Carnegie Institute of Washington (endowment $22,000,000) un- 
questionably owes a great duty toward wild life, no portion of which 
has yet been discharged. Academic research work is all very well, but 
it does not save faunas from annihilation. In the saving of the birds 
and mammals of North America a hundred million people are directly 
interested, and the cause is starving for money, men and publicity. 
Education is not the ONLY duty of educators! 

The Carnegie Museum at Pittsburgh should be provided by Pitts- 
burgh with sufficient funds that its Director can put a good man into 
the field of protection, and maintain his activities. The State of Penn- 
sylvania, and the nation at large, needs such a worker at Pittsburgh; 
and this statement is not open to argument! 



The California Academy of Sciences ; 
The Chicago Academy of Sciences; 
The New York Academy of Sciences; 



Appear to have done nothing 
noteworthy in promoting 



The National Academy of Sciences ; \ the preservation and in 



The Rochester Academy of Sciences ; 
The Philadelphia Zoological Society ; 
The National Zoologfical Park; 



crease of the wild life of 
Aincrica. 



A Few of the Instititions of Learning Which Shoild Each De- 
vote One Man to this Cause. 

Columbia University, of New York, has a very large and strong corps 
of zoological professors in its Department of Biology. No living organism 
is too small or too worthless to be studied by high-grade men ; but does 
any man of Columbia ever raise his voice, actively and determinedly, for 
the preservation of our fauna, or any other fauna? Columbia should 
give the services of one man wholly to this cause. 

There are men whose zoological ideals soar so high that they can 
not see the slaughter of wild creatures that is so furiously proceeding on 



392 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

the surface of this blood-stained earth. We don't want to hear about 
the "behavior" of protozoans while our best song birds are being exter- 
minated by negroes and poor whites. 

Cornell University should now awaken to the new situation. All the 
zoological Neros should not fiddle while Rome burns. For the sake of 
consistency, Cornell should devote the services of at least one member of 
its large and able faculty to the cause of wild-life protection. Cornell was 
a pioneer in forestry teaching: and why should she not lead off now in 
the new field ? 

Yale University, in Professor James W. Toumey, Director of the School 
of Forestry, possesses a natural, ready-made protector of wild life. From 
forestry to wild life is an easy step. We hopefully look forward to the 
development of Professor Toumey into a militant protectionist, fighting 
for the helpless creatures that must be protected by man or perish! If 
Yale is willing to set a new pace for the world's great universities, she 
has the Man ready at hand. 

The University of Chicago should become the center of a great new 
protectionist movement which should cover the whole Middle West area, 
from the plains to Pittsburgh. This is the inflexible, logical necessity 
of the hour. Either protect zoology, or else for very shame give up teaching it! 

Every higher institution of learning in America novo has a duty in this 
matter. Times have changed. Things are not as they were thirty years 
ago. To allow a great and valuable wild fauna to be destroyed and 
wasted is a crime, against both the present and the future. If we mean 
to be good citizens we cannot shirk the duty to conserve. We are trus- 
tees of the inheritance of future generations, and we have no right to 
squander that inheritance. If we fail of our plain duty, the scorn of 
future generations surely will be our portion. 



CHAPTER XLIV 

THE GREATEST NEEDS OF THE WILD-LIFE CAUSE AND 
THE DUTY OF THE HOUR 

The fate of wild life in North America hangs to-day by three very 
slender threads, the names of which you will hardly guess unaided. They 
are Labor, Money and Publicity! The threads are vSlender because 
there is so little raw material in them. 

We do not need money with which to "buy votes" or "influence," 
but money with which to pay workers; to publish things to arouse the 
American people; to sting sportsmen into action; to hire wardens; to 
prosecute game-hogs and buy refuges for wild life. If a sufficient amount 
of money for these purposes cannot be procured, then as sure as the earth 
continues to revolve, our wild life will pass away, forever. 

This is no cause for surprise, or wonder. In this twentieth century 
money is essential to every great enterprise, whether it be for virtue or 
mischief. The enemies of wild life, and the people who support them, 
are very powerful. The man whose pocket or whose personal privilege 
is threatened by new legislation is prompted by business reasons to work 
against you, and spend money in protecting his interests. 

Now, it happens that the men of ordinary means who have nothing 
personal at stake in the preservation of wild life save sentimental con- 
siderations, cannot afford to leave their business more than three or four 
days each year on protection affairs. Yet many times services are 
demanded for many days, or even weeks together, in order to accomplish 
results. Bad repeal bills must be fought until they are dead; and good 
protective bills must be supported until the breath of life is breathed into 
them by the executive signature. 

With money in hand, good men aways can be found who will work in 
game protection for about one-half what they would demand in other 
pursuits. With the men whom you really desire, sentiment is always a 
controlling factor. It is my inflexible rule, however, in asking for services, 
that men who give valuable time and strength to the cause shall not be 
allowed to take their expense money from their own pockets. Soldiers 
on the firing line cannot provide the sinews of war that come from the 
paymaster's chest! 

Campaigns of publicity are matters of tremendous necessity and im- 
portance; but their successful promotion requires hundreds, or possibly 
thousands of dollars, for each state that is covered. 

I believe that the wealthy men and women of America arc the most 
liberal givers for the benefit of humanity that can be found in all the 



394 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE ' 

world. New York especially contains a great number of men who year in 
and year out work hard for money — in order to give it away ! The depth 
and breadth of the philanthropic spirit in New York City is to me the 
most surprising of all the strange impulses that sway the inhabitants of 
that seething mass of mixed humanity. Every imaginable cause for the 
benefit of mankind, — save one, — has received, and still is receiving, 
millions of gift dollars. 

Some enterprises for the transcendant education of the people are at 
this moment hopelessly wallowing in the excess of wealth that has been 
thrust upon them. Men are being hired at high salaries to help spend 
wealth in high, higher, highest education and research. It is now fashion- 
able to bequeath millions to certain causes that do not need them in the 
least! In education there is a mad scramble to educate every young 
man to the topmost notch, often far above his probable station in life, 
and into tastes and wants far beyond his powers to maintain. 

In all this, however, there would be no cause for regret if the wild life 
of our continent were not in such a grievous state. If we felt no con- 
science burden for those who come after us, we would not care where the 
millions go; but since things are as they are, it is heartbreaking to see 
the cause of wild-life protection actually starving, or at the best sub- 
sisting only on financial husks and crumbs, while less important causes 
literally flounder in surplus wealth. 

This regret is intensified by the knowledge that in no other cause 
for the conservation of the resources most valuable to mankind will a dollar 
go so Jar, or bring back such good results, as in the preservation of wild life! 
The promotion of "the Bayne bill" and the enactment of the Bayne law 
is a fair example. That law is to-day on the statute books of the State 
of New York because fifty men and women promptly subscribed $5,000 
to a fund formed with special reference to the expenses of the campaign 
for that measure; and the uplift of that victory will be felt for years to 
come, just as it already has been in Massachusetts. 

At one time I was tempted to show the financial skeleton in the closet 
of wild-life protection, by inserting here a statement of the funds available 
to be expended by all the New York organizations during the campaign 
year of 1911-1912. But I cannot do it. The showing is too painful, too 
humiliating. From it our enemies would derive too much comfort. 

Even in New York State, in view of the great interests at stake, the 
showing is pitiful. But what shall we say of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, 
Connecticut, New Jersey, and a dozen other states where the situation is 
much worse ? In the winter of 1912 a cry for help came to us from a neigh- 
boring state, where a terrific fight was being made by the forces of de- 
struction against all reform measures, and in behalf of retrogression on 
spring shooting. The appeal said : ' ' The situation in our legislature is 
the worst that it has been in years. Our enemies are very strong, well 
organized, and they fight us at every step. We have no funds, and we 
are expected to make bricks without straw ! Is there not something that 
you can do to help us""" 



GREA TEST NEEDS OF WILD-LIFE CA USE 395 

There was! 

Only one week previously, a good friend (who deelines to be named) 
gave us two thousand dollars, of real money, for just such emergencies. 

Within thirty-six hours an entirely new fighting force had been or- 
ganized and equipped for service. Within one week, those reinforcements 
had made a profound impression on the defenses of the enemy, and in the 
end the great fight was won. Of our small campaign fund it took away 
over one thousand dollars; but the victory was worth it. 

With money enough, — a reasonable sum, — the birds of North America, 
and some of the small-mammal species also, can be saved. The big game 
that is hunted and killed outside the game preserves, and outside of such 
places as New Brunswick and the Adirondacks, can not be saved — until 
each species is given perpetual protection. Colorado is saving a small 
remnant of her mountain sheep, but Montana and Wyoming are wasting 
theirs, because they allow killing, and the killers are ten times too nu- 
merous for the sheep. They imagine that by permitting only the killing 
of rams they are saving the species; but that is an absolute fallacy, and 
soon it will have a fatal ending. 

AVith an endowment fund of $2,000,000 (only double the price of the 
two old Velasquez paintings purchased recently by a gentleman of New 
York !) a very good remnant of the wild life of North America could be sa^'ed. 

But who will give the fund, or even a quarter of it ? 
Thus far, the largest sums ever given in America for the cause of wild- 
life protection, so far as I know personalh% have been the following: 

Albert Wilcox, to the National Association of Audubon Societies, $322,000 
Mary Dutcher Fund, to the National Association of Audubon 

Societies 12,000 

Mrs. Russell Sage, for the purchase of Marsh Island 150,000 

American Game Protective and Propagation Association, from 

the manufacturers of firearms and ammunition, annually . . 25,000 
Charles Willis Ward and E. A. Mclllhenny, purchase of game 

preserve presented to Louisiana 39,000 

Mrs. Russell Sage, miscellaneous gifts to the National Audubon 

Society 20,000 

The American Bison Society for the Montana National Herd. . 10,526 

New York Zoological Society, total about 20,000 

John E. Thayer, purchase of game preserve 5,000 

Caroline Phelps Stokes Bird Fund, N. Y. Zoological Society. . . 5.000 

Boone and Crockett Fund for Preservation 5,000 

A Friend in Rochester 2,500 

Henry C. Frick 1.500 

Samuel Thorne 1 250 

Of all the above, the only endowment funds yielding an annual in- 
come are those of the National Association of Audubon Societies and the 
Caroline Phelps Stokes fund of $5,000 in the treasury of the Zoological 
vSociety. 



396 • OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE 

A fund of $25,000 per year for five years has been guaranteed by the 
makers of shot-guns, rifles and ammunition, to the American Game 
Protective and Propagation Association. This is like a limited endow- 
ment. 

In the civilized world there are citizens of many kinds ; but all of them 
can be placed in two groups: (1) those with a sense of duty toward 
mankind, and who will do their duty as good citizens; and (2) those who 
from the cradle to the grave meanly and sordidly study their own selfish 
interests, who never do aught save in expectation of a quick return 
benefit, and who recognize no such thing as duty toward mankind at large. 

Men and women of the first class are honored in life, mourned when 
dead, and gratefully remembered by posterity. They leave the world 
better than they found it, and their lives have been successful. 

Men and women of the second class are merely so many pieces of 
animated furniture; and when they pass out the world cares no more 
than when old chairs are thrown upon the scrap-heap. 

There are many men so selfish, so ignorant and mean of soul that 
even out of well-filled purses they would not give ten dollars to save the 
whole bird fauna of North America from annihilation. To all persons 
of that brand, it is useless to appeal. As soon as you find one, waste 
no time upon him. Get out of his neighborhood as quickly as you can, 
and look for help among real MEN. 

The wild life of the world cannot be saved by a few persons, even 
though they work their hearts out in the effort. The cause needs two 
million more helpers; and they must be sought in Group No. 1. They 
are living, somewhere; but the great trouble is to find them, before it is 
too late. 

There are times and causes in which the good citizen has no option 
but to render service. The most important of such causes are : the relief 
of suffering humanity, the conservation of the resources of nature, and 
the prevention of vandalism. If the American Nation had refused 
aid to stricken San Francisco, the callous hard-heartedness of it would 
have shocked the world. If the German army of 1871 had destroyed the 
art treasures and the libraries of Paris, it would have set the German 
nation back ten centuries, into the ranks of the lowest barbarians. 

And yet, in America, and in the regions now being scourged by the 
feather trade, a wonderful FAUNA is being destroyed! It took millions 
of years to develop that marvelous array of wild life ; and when gone it 
never can he replaced! Yet the Army of Destruction is sweeping it away 
as joyously as a hired laborer cuts down a field of corn. 

That wild life can be saved! If done, it must be done by the men 
and women of Group No. 1. The means by which it can be saved are: 
Money, labor and publicity. Every man of ordinary means and intelligence 
can contribute either money or labor. The men on the firing line must 
not be expected to furnish their own food and ammunition. The Workers 
MUST be provided with the money that active campaign work imper- 
atively demands! Those who cannot conveniently or successfully labor 



GREATEST NEEDS OF WILD-LIFE CAUSE 397 

should give money to this cause; but at the same time, every good citizen 
should keep in touch with his lawmaking representatives, and in times 
of need ask for votes for whatever new laws are necessary. 

With money enough to arouse the American people in certain ways, 
the wild life of North America (north of Mexico) can be saved. Money 
can secure labor and publicity, and the People will do the rest. For this 
campaign work I want, and must have, a permanent fund of $10,000 per 
annum, — cash always ready for every emergency in field work. I greatly 
need, and must have, immediately, an endowment Wild-Life Fund of at 
least $100,000, and eventually $250,000. I can no longer "pass the hat" 
each year. This is needed in addition to the several thousands of dollars 
annually being expended by the Zoological Society in this work. The 
Society is already doing its utmost in wild-life protection, just as it is 
in several other fields of activity. 

Outside of New York many wealthy men will say, "Let New York 
do it!" That often is the way when national campaigning is to be done. 
In national wild-life protection work. New York is to-day bearing about 
nine-tenths of the burden. It is my belief that in 1912 outside of New 
York City less than $10,000 was raised and expended in wild-life pro- 
tection save by state and national appropriations. We know that in the 
year mentioned New York expended $221,000 in this cause, all from 
private sources. 

In a very short time I shall call for the $100,000 that I now must 
have as an endowment fund for nation-wide work, to be placed at 5^2 
per cent interest for the $5,500 annual income that it will yield. How 
much of this will come from outside the State of New York? Some of it, 
I am sure, will come from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania; but will any 
of it come from Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis and San 
Francisco ? 

The Duty of the Hour 

I have now said my say in behalf of wild life. Surely the path of 
duty toward the remnant of wild life is plain enough. Will those who 
read this book pass along my message tiiat the hour for a revolution has 
struck? Will the millions of men commanded by General Apathy now 
arouse, before it is too late to act? 

Will the true sportsmen rise up, and do their duty, bravely and un- 
selfishly ? 

Will the people with wealth to give away do their duty toward wild life 
and humanity, fairly and generously? 

Will the zoologists awake, leave their tables in their stone ])alaces 
of peace, and come out to the firing-line ? 

Will the lawmakers heed the handwriting on the wall, and make laws 
that represent the full discharge of their duty toward wild life and humanity ? 

Will the editors beat the alarm-gong, early and late, in season and 
out of season, until the people awake? 

On the answers to these questions hang the fate of the wild creatures 
of the world, — their prescrv^ation or their extermination. 



I 



INDEX 



Abundance of wild life, 1. 

Accuracy, value of, in campaigning, 262. 

Acklen, J. H., 252. 

Actinomycosis, 82, 83. 

Adams, Cyrus C, on the lion, 183. 

Adirondack State Park, 347. 

Adjutant, 123. 

Africa, big game of, 181; game preserves 
in, 364, 367; rinderpest in, 83; "soon to 
be shot out," 206. 

African big game disappearing, 187. 

African game that needs exemption, 
383. 

Agriculture, Department of, 208, 212. 

Aigrette, 120. 

Akeley, C. E., 186. 

Alabama, 42, 46, 59, 106; deer killed in, 
172; laws of, 268. 

Alabama Game Commissioner, 252. 

Alaska, 46; brown bears of, 178; new laws 
needed in, 264; game of, 270; Sitka 
National Monument in, 344. 

Alaska — Yukon region, 157. 

Albatross, steamer, seals taken by, 40. 

Albatrosses, Laysan, 138; 140. 

Alberta, 45, 51, 158, 162, 165; at fault on 
antelope-shooting, 351 ; laws of parks of, 
352. 

Alden, M.P., Percy, 135. 

Algonquin National Park, 351. 

Aliens, game wardens killed by, 103; pro- 
hibited from owning firearms, 103; 
slaughter of song-birds by, 100. 

Altai Mountains of western China, 190. 

American Bison Society, 180. 

American Game Protective and Propaga- 
tion Association, 257, 395. 

"American Natural History" on hawks 
and owls, 224, 338. 

American, North, Fish and Game Protec- 
tive Association, 385. 

American private game preserves, 358. 

Amsterdam, 120. 

Animallai Hills to-day and in 1877, 188. 

"Animal Life in Africa," on status of set- 
tlers, 365. 

Animals, predatory, 73; caught by cats, 
73; wild, may become nuisances, 234. 



Antelope, prong-horned, 2; attempts to 
transplant, 163; in Alberta, 51; in Mon- 
tana, 287; in Nevada, 288; in Texas, 51 ; 
in Wyoming, 51; lumpy jaw in, 83, 84; 
physical weakness of, 160; present status 
of, 159; preserve in Montana, 2; wrong 
to kill, 351. 

Anthony bill for migratory birds, 267, 306. 

Antelopes, African, for the South, 242. 

Aphis devouring potato-tops, 213. 

Apple crop, losses on, 210. 

Aquarium, West Indian seals in, 39. 

Areas inhabitated by big game, 157. 

Argali, Siberian, 191. 

Arizona, 42, 46; new laws needed in, 270; 
national monuments in, 344. 

Arizona elk exterminated, 35. 

Arkansas, 42, 106; new laws needed in, 270. 

Army of Defense, 248, 257. 

Army of Destruction, 54, 59. 

Army worm, 221. 

Arnold, Craig D., 43. 

Ashe, T. J., 133. 

Asia, future of big game of, 188. 

Asiatic game that should be close-seasoned, 
383. 

Askins, Charles, article in Recreation by, 
107. 

Association in Pennsylvania fighting Game 
Commission, 245. 

Association, Wool-Growers, fighting an- 
telope preserve, 2, 348. 

Astlcy, Hubert D., 94. 

Atkinson, George, 86. 

Atlanta Journal, 106. 

Audubon Societies, National Association 
of, 28, 254, 256, 291, 395. 

Auk, Great, 9, 10. 

Austrians in Minnesota, 49. 

Australia, animal pests in, 331, 332; game 
preserves in, 364. 

Automatic and pump shot-guns, 61, 65, 
144; campaign against, won in New Jer- 
sey, 289; denounced by organizations, 
152; use of, prohibited by law, 152. 

Automobile, use of, in hunting forbidden, 
60. 

Automobiles detrimental to wild life, 293. 



399 



400 



INDEX 



Avare, Game Warden Henry, 49, 159, 287. 

Avery, Carlos, 341. 

Avery Island, La., robin slaughter at, 108. 

Avicultural Magazine, 94. 

Avocet, 230. 

Bag insects, 213. 

Bag limit, in Africa, 181, 186; a delusion, 
60, 66; Alberta, 355; British Columbia, 
356; Manitoba, 357; Saskatchewan, 357. 
Baird, Spencer F., 329. 
Baker, Frank, 180. 
Bancroft, W. F., 50. 
Barber, Charles, 52. 

Barren grounds of the Arctic regions, 157. 
Baynard, Oscar E., 28. 
Bayne law against sale of game in New 
York, 68; bill, 252, 257; breeding game 
under, 370; genesis of, 307. 
Beal, F. E. L., 222. 

Bear, black, in South Carolina, 150, 179; 
grizzly, ethics of hunting the, 176; al- 
most gone from United States, 178; Cal- 
ifornia grizzly, 41. 
Bears, Alaskan brown, 178; alleged dam- 
ages by, 178; grizzly, bag limit de- 
manded on, 356; in Yellowstone Park, 
estimated, ;336; killed by Forestry Bu- 
reau, 79; of Yellowstone Park, 313. 
Beard, Daniel C, cartoon by, 55; on bird 

destruction, 77. 
Beaver in New Brunswick, 52. 
Bedford, Duke of, David's deer saved by, 

36. 
Beebe, C. William, 69, 93, 115, 192; chap- 
ter written by, 195. 
Bell, Rudolph, 102. 
Bell, W. B., 44, 50. 
Berlin feather trade, 120. 
Beyer, G. E., 48. 
Big Horn Game Preserve, 349. 
Biological Survey, 388 ; on duck disease, 87 ; 

work of, 249; on wood-duck, 28. 
Biology, Elementary, by Peabody and 

Hunt, 376. 
Bird, Charles S., 343. 
Bird boxes distributed by J. M. Phillips, 

381. 
Bird Day in various states, 378. 
Bird Refuges, National, full Hst of, 345. 
Birds, becoming extinct in North America, 
17; feeding in winter, 227; killed by 
cats, 73; by dogs, 76; by foxes, 332; 
by mongoose, 333; by negroes, 105; 
by telephone wires, 77; by wild ani- 
mals, 77; destruction of, in Far East, 
195; extinct, 9, 15; food habits of cer- 
tain, 218; extinct in North America, 
7; in distress, 82; killed in New York 
City, 101; list of, that devour codling 



moth, 215; threatened with extermina- 
tion, 18. 
Bird skins purchased in London, 116, 135. 
Bishop, Dr. Louis B., 98. 
Bison, American, now living, 180; last of 
Colorado, killed, 69, 272; Yellowstone 
Park, 337; wild, in Yellowstone Park, 
336; value of, 2. 
Bison herd, Wichita National, 179. 
Bison ranges created, 249. 
Bison ranges. National: in United States, 

180; in Canada, 180. 
Bison Society, American, 395; proposes 

National herd, 342. 
Beaman, D. C, 273. 
Blackbird, Crow, 222. 
Blackbirds, destroy cotton-boll weevil,217 ; 

killed as "game," 105. 
Black-Snake, Pilot, 81. 
Blair, Dr. W. Reid, 84, 85, 86. 
Blaubok, extinct, 35. 
Blauvelt, George A, 251, 281. 
Blesbok in Cape Colony, 185. 
Blinding decoy birds, 12, 97. 
Blooming Grove Park, 359. 
Bluebirds killed by cold weather, 9. 
Blue Mountain Forest Association, 343. 
Bontebok in Cape Colony, 185. 
Bob-White, food habits of, 219. 
Boone and Crockett Club, 152, 161, 256, 

383, 395. 
Boston Society of Natural History, 390. 
Bowdish, B. S., 50. 
Boxes for birds distributed, 381. 
Boy Scouts of America, appeal to, 32. 
Bradley, Guy M., killed by a plume- 
hunter, 26, 27. 
Brazil, birds' plumage from, 122. 
Breeding, ducks in captivity, 373; game 

and fur in captivity, 369, 374. 
Breeding wild animals need seclusion, 322. 
Brett, Lieut.-Col. L. M., animal census 

from, 336. 
Brewster, William, 24, 43, 48. 
Brimley, H. H. and C. S., 44, 50. 
Bringing back birds and game, 313, 323; 

vanishing species, 322. 
British Columbia, 45, 51, 157, 158, 162, 
165; game conditions in, 356; game pre- 
serves in, 353. 
British East Africa, remarkable bag 

"limit" in, 181, 186. 
Bronx River, ducks killed by pollution of, 

92. 
Brooklyn Institute, 390. 
Brooks, Earle A., 51. 

Brown, William Harvey, at Salisbury 184. 
Brown, William P., 51. 
Bryan, W. A., 137, 139. 
Buckland, James, 125, 135, 136. 



INDEX 



401 



Buckskin Mountain, 343. 

Buffalo Academy of Sciences, 390. 

Buffalo in Cape Colony, 1S.5. 

Buffalo, American, now living, 180; see 

Bison. 
Buffalo Park, Alberta, 352. 
Bunting, Snow, 8, 58; killed for food, 68. 
Burnham, John B., 251 ; portrait, 251 ; 2.52, 

257, 290. 
Burtch, Verdi, 93. 
Bustard being exterminated, 119. 
Butcher bird, SO. 
Butler, A. L., 247. 
Butler, Amos W., 43, 47. 

CaHfornia, 42, 47, 59, 65, 106, 165; griz- 
zlies, 178; new laws needed in 271; 
Academy of Sciences, 391 ; National 
monuments of, 344; State Game Pre- 
serve, 349; University of, 390. 

Call, San Francisco, 263. 

CaUisti, Superb, 115. 

Camp-Fire Club of America, 152, 256, 353, 
384; code of ethics of, 384. 

Camp-Fire Club of Detroit, 338, 385. 

Campion, C, 14. 

Camp laborers as game destroyers, 71. 

Canada, 45; game laws and preserves in, 
350. 

Cape Province, South Africa, big game in, 
185. 

Carbonell, E. T., 46. 

Caribou, 83; in Nova Scotia, 52; in gen- 
eral, status of, 173; killed for their 
tongues, 46, 269; Osborn, 357; slaugh- 
tered and wasted, in Quebec, 70. 

Caribou disease, 83. 

Carleton, L. T., 283. 

Carnegie Institute of Washington, 391. 

Carrick, Penn., bird day at, 379. 

Cartridges, estimated annual production 
of, 150. 

Cat and its victim, 76. 

Cats, birds destroyed by, 73, 81. 

Caterpillars eaten by shore-birds, 231. 

Caton, John Dean, 359. 

Cause, choice of a, 258. 

Cedar Bird, eaten as "game," 106. 

Cereals, losses on, from insects, 212. 

Corbin bison herd, 342. 

Chambers, Fred. W., 51. 

Chamois, slaughter of jirotected, in Swit- 
zerland, 321. 

Chapman, Arthur, 45, 50. 

Charles, Salem D., 253. 

Cheney, Henry W., 240. 

Chieago Academy of Sciences, 391. 

Chicago as a plague-spot for sale of game, 
280; devours Norway ptarmigan, 69; 
University of, 392. 



Chimpanzee, 187. 

China barren of wild life, 192; raked and 

scraped for ducks, 69. 
Chinch-bug, 209, 210. 
Chinese now buyers of game, 198. 
Christian, L. T., 51. 
Cigarette beetle, 212. 
Cincinnati Zoological Gardens, 11. 
Clark, I. C, 50. 
Clark, W. A., 231. 
Claxton, Dr. P. P., on Tennessee robin 

slaughter, 107. 
Clergy, Italian, duty of, 103. 
Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co., 371. 
Close season law in New York, 90. 
Close season, at discretion, 89; long, 

needed, 62. 
Clubs opposed to automatic guns, 153. 
Coccidiosus, intestinal, in ducks, 87. 
Cock of the Rock, 113. 
Codling moth, birds that devour the, 215. 
Cold storage of game in New York, 68. 
Cold storage warehouses and steamers in 

China, 200. 
Collier's Weekly, 263. 
Colonist, Victoria, 263. 
Colorado, 42, 47, 59, 71; new laws needed 

in, 272; game-breeding laws of, 369; 

national monuments of, 344. 
Comity between states, lack of, 266. 
Commission, New York Conservation, 252. 
Commissions, State Game, 250. 
Comparative Zoology, Museum of, 390. 
Condor, California, 21, 22, 119, 123. 
Conference of Powers on African wild life, 

364. 
Congo Free State, 187. 
Congress, 267; acts of, for wild life, 249; 

creates National Bison Range, 342, 343; 

creates National monuments, 344 ; saves 

the starving elk, 338. 
Connaught National Park, 355. 
Connecticut, 42, 47, 59, 106; new laws 

needed in, 275; protects wood-duck, 28. 
Conrad bison herd, 342. 
Conrad, Charles H., 340. 
Corliin, Austin, 360; deer sold by, 371. 
Cormorant, Pallas, 9, 11. 
Corn and hogs, and wild life protection, 

281 
Corn,'losses on, 208, 212. 
Corn-root worm, 208. 
Cornell Universitv, 392. 
Cotton-boll weevil, 215, 216, 221. 
Cotton, loss on, 210, 212, 215; rise in price 

of, affects birds, 110. 
Cougars destroyed in British Columbia, 

356. 
Country Life in America, 374. 
Cox, J. D., 50. 



402 



INDEX 



Coyotes, 53; destroyed, 79; destroyed in 
British Columbia, 356. 

Crandall, L. S., on breeding mallard duck, 
373. 

Cranes in Alberta, 355. 

Crane, Whooping, 18. 

Crater Lake National Park, 343. 

Crayfishes eaten by shore-birds, 231. 

Credit for work done, 264. 

Cree Indians, 8. 

Crow, ducklings destroyed by, 80. 

Crow, F. L., robins slaughtered by, 106. 

Cruelty of "aigrette" hunters, 130; of al- 
batross killers, 141. 

Cuppy, W. B., deer raised by, 171. 

Curculio, 210. 

Curlew, Eskimo, 9, 14, 228; long-billed, 
18. 

Currituck County wild-fowl slaughter, 292, 
311. 

Currituck Sound, N. C, 64, 134. 

Cuthbert Rookery, 131. 

Cut-worm, 209, 221. 

Dakota, vSouth, National monuments of, 
344. 

Dallas, Tex., disgraced by robin slaughter, 
106. 

Dalton and Young, 121. 

Damages by deer in Vermont, 241. 

David's deer, 8, 35. 

Davis, C. B., narrative of elk slaughter, 70. 

Davis, Capt. M. B., 45, 50. 

Deadfall traps in Burma, 198. 

Deer, accept protection, 313; as a food 
supply, 234, 242; cash value of, 241; 
caught in Hudson River, 82; damages 
to crops by, 240; danger from, 371; in 
New York City, 91; killed in Louisiana, 
5; killed in Vermont since 1897, 240; 
pamphlet on raising, 371; possibilities 
in, 236; present status of, 173; slaugh- 
ter in Montana, 287; value of, 371; 
black-tailed, 173; European red, 372; 
fallow, 372; Indian sambar, 372; red, 
of Europe, 372; white-tailed, breed- 
ing, 369; future of, 171; in Iowa, 171; 
killed in various states, 172; portrait of, 
237; weights of, in Vermont, 371. 

Defects in the protection of western big 
game, 302. 

Defenders of wild life, 248. 

Pelaware, 42, 47, 106; new laws needed 

, in, 275. 

Denmead, Talbott, 48. 

Destroyers of wild life, 248. 

Destruction, Army of, 54, 55, 59. 

Detroit, Camp-Fire Club of, 338. 

Dike, A. C, on cats, 75. 

Dill, Homer R., 139, 140. 



Dimock, Julian A., 131. 

Diseases, destruction of wild life by, 82. 

District of Columbia, new laws needed in, 
276. 

Ditmars, Raymond L., 81. 

Dix, Governor John A., 134, 252, 290. 

Dodo, 17, 28, 281. 

Dogs as destroyers of birds, 76. 

Doves killed and eaten as "game," 106; 
killed 1909-10 in Louisiana, 5. 

Dowitcher, 18, 31, 228, 230. 

Downham, C. F., 124, 127, 129, 134. 

Downtrodden hunters and anglers, 204. • 

Duck disease, 87. 

Duck, Labrador, 9, 11; mallard, breeding 
of, in captivity, 373. 

Duck breeder, ducks killed by, 57. 

Duck Mountain Game Preserve, 354. 

Duck-shooting preserves, 361. 

Ducks, accept protection, 317, 318; in dis- 
tress from severe winter, 92; killed 1909- 
10 in Louisiana, 5. 

Dutcher fund, Mary, 395. 

Dutcher law against bird millinery, 115. 

Dutcher, WiUiam, 28, 217, 256, 291; de- 
nounces automatic guns, 151. 

Duties of the hour, 53, 397. 

Duty of nations, states and lawmakers, 
266; of zoologists, 386. 

Dyche, Lewis Lindsay, 43, 389. 

Eagle, golden, destroys sheep and goats, 
78; in British Columbia, 356. 

Eagles being exterminated, 118, 119. 

Ear-worm, 209. 

Eastgate, Alfred, 44, 50. 

Eaton, Howard, 51. 

Edgell, George S., 360. 

Egret, American, 26; colonies in Florida, 
28; preserve of E. A. Mcllhenny, 26, 
319; snowy, 26. 

Egrets, being exterminated, 119, 121, 122, 
124, 126; slaughter of, in Venezuela, 129; 
young, starving on nest, 132. 

Eland in Cape Colony, 185. 

Elephant, Congo Pygmy, 187. 

Elephant Seals taken by C. H. Townsend, 
40. 

Elk, Arizona, now extinct, 34; calves killed 
by pumas, 78; distribution of living, 167; 
easily bred in captivity, 370; fed in Jack- 
son Hole, 320; of Yellowstone Park and 
Jackson Hole, 337; progressive exter- 
mination of, 164; saved by Congress in 
1911, 166; Seton's map of former and 
existing ranges, 163; slaughter on Buffalo 
Flats, Mont., 70; supplv of elk wasted, 
166. 

Elk Island Park, 352, 353. 

Elk River Game Preserve, B. C, 353. 



INDEX 



403 



Elm beetles, 213. 

Elrod, Morton J., 49. 

Emeu, 123. 

Engel, C. M., on the lion, 183. 

Epicure and quail, 221. 

Espeut, W. B., 332. 

Estes Park, 274. 

Ethics of sportsmanship, 143, 144, 382, 

384. 
Eaton's "Birds of New York," 13. 
Evans, Game Commissioner Kell}^ 350, 

351. 
Ewbank, E. L., 44, 50. 
Exempt species, lists of proposed, 383. 
Extermination, African animals in line for, 

187; birds threatened with, 18; defined, 

8; of big game, 158; of birds for women's 

hats, 115; of birds of paradise, 125; of 

species, by states, 42. 
Extinct species of North American birds, 

7. 

Falcon, perigrine, 226. 

Fallow deer, 372; introduced in Lambay, 
328. 

Farmers, supineness of, 4, 279. 

Farming, fox, 374. 

Feather sales in London, 120, 121, 122. 

Federal migratory bird law needed, 260, 
304-306 . 

Felton, W. R., 49, 348. 

"Fence" for sale of stolen game, in Wash- 
ington, 276. 

Ferry, John F., 19. 

Fever tick eaten by plovers, 229. 

Field, George W., 24, 253. 

Field, The American, 263. 

Field and Stream, 263. 

Figgis & Co., 121. 

Fines, schedule of suitable, 260. 

Finley, W. L., 50. 

Firearms, owned by natives in India, 189; 
unfair, 143, 148, 149, 1.50. 

Fisher, Walter K., 137. 

Flamingo, American, 20. 

Fleming, James W., 290. 

Flies eaten by quail, 221. 

Florida, 43, 47, 105; deer killed in, 172; 
new laws needed in, 276. 

Flycatchers, 222; destroy boll weevil, 217; 

Foes of wild life, 73. 

Food for winter birds, 227. 

Food habits of certain birds, 218. 

Food supply of deer, possible, 236. 

Forbes, Professor, 210. 

Forbush, E. H., 14; on heath hen, 24; 
quotation from, 75; on the Sunday gun, 
153; on upland plover, 21, 31; portrait 
of, 251, 253. 

Forest and Stream, 263. 



Forestry Bureau, United States, 388; on 

predatory animals, 79. 
Forests, losses on, 210, 212; National, 

should be game preserves, 267 ; of the 

Far East, 192; preservation of National, 

338. 
Fox, black or "silver," 374. 
Fox pest in Australia, 331. 
Fox skins sold in London, 193. 
Foxes as bird destroyers, 78. 
Fruit, losses on, 210, 212. 
France, bird plumage trade in, 117; song 

birds sold for food in, 98. 
Frazer River Game Preserve, 353. 
Frick, Henry C, 395. 
Fullerton, Samuel, 341. 
Fund, wild life endowment, 397. 
Funk Island, 11. 
Fur-bearing mammals killed in Louisiana, 

5. 
Fur News Magazine, 193. 
Furs, degradation of fashions in, 105. 
Fur Seal, 249. 
Furs sold in London, 193. 

Game, and agriculture, 234-242; as a state 
asset, 283; belongs to the People, 143; 
big, of North America, 155, 157; bill, 
how to draw a, 260 ; birds, as a mass, 3 ; in 
Yellowstone Park, 336; in Glacier Park, 
340; killed in Louisiana, 5; law, how to 
make a new, 2.58; market value of, 309; 
dead game in New York, 311 ; of Africa, 
absurd bag limit on, 181 ; preserves, map 
of national, 339; slaughter with auto- 
matic guns, 147, 148, 149, 1.50. 

"Game Birds, Wild Fowl and Shore Birds," 
253. 

Game-hog, 58, 244; not easily educated, 
2.58. 

Game preserve, see Preserve. 

"Garceros," 126, 127. 

Gardiner, Montana, 70, 337; antelope at- 
tacked in, 91. 

Gaspesian F. F. and G. Preserve, 355. 

Geay, F., 127, 129. 

Geer vs. Connecticut, decision in Supreme 
Court, 3, 143. 

Geese, killed 1909-10 in Louisiana, 5; 
slaughter of, by automatic guns, 148, 
149, 150. 

GemslDok in Cape Colony, 185. 

Georgia, 43, 47, 106; deer killed in, 172; 
new laws needed in, 278. 

Gerard, W. W., 52. 

Gerhardt, Fred., 51. 

German Carp, 329. 

Gibb, Walter S., 340. 

Glacier Park, Alberta, 352, 338; game in, 
340. 



404 



INDEX 



Glenn Countv Club, record slaughter at, 
65, 148. 

Globe, New York, 263 

Globe-Democrat, St. Louis, 263. 

Goat, White Mountain, present status of, 
164. 

Goats, in Glacier Park, 340; killed for food, 
70; mountain, killed by eagles, 78. 

Goding, Edward N., 253. 

Godwit, 231; Hudsonian, 18. 

Goeldi, E. A., 20. 

Goodnight, Charles, 50, 342. 

Gorilla, 187. 

Goshawk, 226. 

Grand Canyon Game Preserve, 343. 

Grant, General, National Park, 344. 

Grant, Madison, 247; portrait of, 254; 
game laws proposed by, 46. 

Grasshoppers eaten by quail, 221; bv 
shore-birds, 229. 

Gray, J. C, protector of ducks, 318. 

Grinnell, G. B., 256. 

Grinnell, Joseph, on California condor, 
22. 

Grisol, Mayeul, 126, 129. 

Grizzly, California, almost extinct, 41, 
178; punishing an impudent, 314; silver- 
tip, in British Columbia, 178. 

Grosbeak, 223. 

Grouse becoming extinct in California, 47 ; 
Idaho, 47; Montana, 49; North Dakota, 
50; Virginia, 51; Wisconsin, 51; Wyom- 
ing, 51. 

Grouse, Canada, 52. 

Grouse, pinnated, diminishing in Man- 
itoba, 52; Illinois, 47; Indiana, 47; Iowa, 
47; Kansas, 48; Missouri, 49; North 
Dakota, 50; Oklahoma, 50; increasing 
in Manitoba, 52; shot in Kansas, 245. 

Grouse, Prairie Sharp-Tailed, 25. 

Grouse, Ruffed, illegally shipped, 66, 67. 

Grouse, Sage, 25; in California, 47; Idaho, 
47 ; becoming extinct in Montana, 49. 

Guadaloupe Island, elephant seals on, 40. 

Guanaco ''n Patagonia, 169. 

Guerrillas of destruction, 63. 

Guessaz, O. L., 51. 

Gulls, slaughtered on Laysan Island, 139; 
and terns saved by Audubon Societies, 
320. 

Gunners, two, of Kansas City, 61 ; who kill 
to the limit, 56, 58, 65 ; will not give up 
shooting "rights," 305. 

Guns, automatic or machine, 153; bill to 
prohibit use of, 153; increase in dead- 
liness of, 145; four machine, 144; sta- 
tistics of, 145, 150; swivel and punt, 
suppressed, 143. 

Gurkha soldiers destroying game, 190. 

Gypsy Moth, 211 ; cost of fighting, 330. 



Hagenbeck, Carl, 126; agent for, 372. 

Hale & Sons, 121. 

Halifax, Curator of Museum at, 52. 

Hankow, cold storage plant in, 200. 

Harrison, George L., experience of, 190. 

Hartebeest in Cape Colony, 185. 

Hathaway, Harry S., 45, 50. 

Hawaiian Islands Reservation (Laysan), 

142. 
Hawk, Cooper's, 80, 225; sharp-shinned, 

81; pigeon, 80; duck, 80; red-shouldered, 

225; red-tailed, 225. 
Hawk law of Pennsylvania, 223. 
Hawks, being exterminated, 119; general 

status of, 223. 
Hay, loss on, 210, 212. 
Heath hen, 8, 48; present status of, 24. 
Henshaw, Henry W., pamphlet by, 216. 
Herald, New York, 263. 
Heron, colonies under protection, 28; 

plumage sold in London, 121, 126. 
Hessian fly, 210. 
Hippopotami for the South, 242. 
Himalayan birds being exterminated, 196. 
Hodge, C. P., 14. 

Hog-and-corn area of extermination, 281. 
Holman. Ralph, 253. 
Hooper, Franklin W., 390. 
Hopkins, A. D., 211. 
Hornaday, W. T., bison census, 180; code 

of ethics written by, 384. 
Horse, bicolored wild, 192. 
Hough, Emerson, gloomv views of, 206. 
Howard, F. M., 221. 
Howard, James, 43, 48. 
Hufifman, L. A., 49, 348. 
Hume, A. O., 197. 
Hummingbirds, being exterminated, 120; 

skins sold in London, 116, 121, 124. 
Humphrey, J. J., 150. 
Humphrey, William E., 340. 
Hungarian partridge, 327. 
Hungarians, song birds killed by, 102. 
Hunt, Arthur E., text book by, 376. 
Hunter, W. D., 210. 
Hunting licenses in all states, 59. 
Hurd, Lyman E., 2.53. 

Ibis being exterminated, lis, 119. 

Ibis, Scarlet, 18, 20. 

Idaho, 43, 47, 59, 106, 165; grizzlies, 178; 

new laws needed in, 278; slaughter of 

starving elk in, 90; state game preserve 

349. 
Illinois, 43, 47, 59, 106; new laws needed 

in, 279. 
Impeyan pheasant not bred in captivity, 

198. 
In-and-in breeding in wild animals, 328. 
Independent, New York. 



INDEX 



405 



Index- Appeal, Pittsburgh, 263. 

India, sasin antelope in, 82. 

Indiana, 43, 47, 59; new laws needed in, 
280. 

Indianapolis assists in exterminating bird- 
of-paradise, 280. 

Indians, and game of Alaska, 269; as 
game exterminators, 46; rights of, in 
game, 384; unjustifiable license given to, 
176. 

Insect ravages in New South Wales, 233. 

Insectivorous birds killed for food in Min- 
nesota, 49. 

Insects, eaten bv quail, 220; eaten by shore- 
birds, 229-233; losses by, 208, 212. 

In the Open magazine, 263. 

Introduced pests, 330; English sparrow, 
334; fox in Australia, 332; gypsy moth, 
330; mongoose, 332; pheasants, 325; 
rabbits in Australia and New Zealand, 
331. 

Iowa, 43, 47, 59; new laws needed in, 280; 
deer in, 171. 

Irocjuois Theatre fire, lesson of the, 280. 

Italian peninsula a migration route, 94. 

Italian ])opulation,in Minnesota, 49; must 
be educated, 103. 

Italians, slaughter of song birds by, 94, 
102; song Ijirds caught alive by, 97; 
song birds sold as food by, 98; vulture, 
eaten by, 101. 

Jabiru, 123. 

Jackson Hole, starving elk of, 320, 337. 

Jacobs, Captain of the Thetis, 139. 

Jacobs, J. Warren, 217. 

Japanese poachers on Laysan Island, 139. 

Jasper Park, 352, 353. 

Jones, C. J. ("Buffalo"), 78, 314; captures 

nine pumas, 343. 
Jordan, Arthur, 182. 
Journal, Minneapolis, 263. 
judd, Sylvester, 220. 

Kadiak Island, bear slaughter ])roposed 

on, 269. 
Kaegebehn, Ferdinand, 35. 
Kaibab Plateau, catalo herd on, 343. 
Kalbfus, Joseph, 254; portrait, 255, 326, 

346. 
Kamchatka, 193. 
Kangaroo skins, 194. 
Kansas, 43, 48, 59; new laws needed in, 

281; University of, 389. 
Kansas City gunners, 61. 
Kashmir, game protection in, 190. 
Keller, H. W., 47. 
Kelly, A. F., 332. 
Kennard, Frederic H., 340. 



Kentucky, 43, 106; new laws needed in, 
282; robbed of game for Pittsburgh, 
67. 

Kcuka Lake, ducks in distress on, 93. 

Kildeer Plover, 228, 229, 230; portrait of^ 
230. 

Killing men by "mistake," 260. 

Kingfisher, Belted, 113. 

Kite, White-Tailed, 18-23. 

Klamath Lakes of Oregon, 64. 

Kleinschmidt, Frank E., 46, 269. 

Kudu in Cape Colny, 185. 

Laborers as game-killers, 71. 

Labrador, 157, 355. 

Lacey, John F., 247. 

Laglaize, Leon, 126, 127, 128, 129. 

Lampson & Co., C. M., 193. 

Lark, meadow, eaten as game, 106, 222. 

Laurentides Park, 354. 

Law, making close seasons by petition, 90; 
of Nature, an inexorable, 63; prohibiting 
firearms to aliens, 103; proposed for ani- 
mal nuisances, 235; proposed for Sunday 
gun, 153. 

Lawmakers, work with, 262. 

Lawrence, S. C, 331. 

Laws, absolutely necessary to wild life, 
245; how to secure new, 387; new, 
needed, 265. 

Lawyer, George A., 290. 

Laysan Island, bird tragedy on, 137. 

League of American Sportsmen, 102, 152. 

Leek, S. N., 51, 320, 337; elk photographs 
by, 167. 

Lemon, Frank E., 136. 

Le vSouef, W. H. D., 332. 

Lewis and Clark Cluli, 152, 383. 

Lewis & Peet, 121, 124, 126. 

Licenses, hunting, in all states, 59. 

"Life Histories of Northern Animals," 374. 

Lincoln, Robert Page, 49. 

Lion, map of disappearance of the, 183. 

Lobbying a duty, 250. 

Locusts eaten by shore-birds, 230. 

Lodge, Senator Henry Cabot, 338. 

London Chamber of Commerce, 122, 127, 
136. 

London feather trade, 115, 117. 

Lord, William R., 253. 

Loring, J. Alden, wild birds tamed by, 314. 

Louisiana, 43, 48, 59, 105, 106, 108; deer 
killed in, 172; game in, 4; new laws need- 
ed in, 282; state game prcscrs-e, 361; 
state wild-fowl refuge, 349. 

Lumpy-jaw in antelope and sheep, 83. 

Lydekker, Richard, on rabbits, 331. 

Lynxes destroyed, 79. 

Lyre bird being exterminated, 1 IS, 125. 



406 



INDEX 



MacDougal, Dr. D. T., 46. 

McAtee, W. L., on enemies of codling moth 
215; on "Our Vanishing Shore-Birds," 
228-233. 

McBride, scout, counts game in Yellow- 
stone Park, 336. 

Mcllhenny, Edward A., 5, 255, 349, 395; 
on egret preserve, 26; on Louisiana birds, 
48; robin slaughter mentioned by, 108; 
testimony from, on shed plumes, 129. 

McLean, Marshall, on codification of New 
York game laws, 290. 

McLean, Senator George P., 275; bill for 
migratory birds, 267, 306. 

Macaw, Gosse's, 16; Guadeloupe, 16. 

Mackay, G. H., 14. 

Mail and Express, New York, 263. 

Maine, 43, 48, 59, 157; deer killed in, 172; 
new laws needed in, 283; protects wood- 
duck, 28. 

Malayana, wild life in, 192. 

Mammals, wholly or nearly extinct, 34. 

Manitoba, 45, 52; game reserves of, 
354. 

Map, of game preserves in Africa, 366; of 
National game preserves, 339; of states 
prohibiting sale of game, 307 ; of wilder- 
ness area of North America, 156; used 
in campaign for Bayne law, 309. 

Market-gunners, 63, 64, 65. 

Marlatt, C. L., on losses by insects, 207, 
212. 

Marlin Fire-Arms Co., 144, 146. 

Marsh Island, a market-gunner on, 64; 
map of, 361. 

Martin, A. P., 214. 

Martin, Purple, 217; shot for food, 219; 
disappearing, 48. 

Maryland, 43, 48, 105, 106; deer killed in, 
172; new laws needed in, 284. 

Mashonaland, 186. 

Massachusetts, 43, 48, 59, 115, 253; deer 
killed in, 172; excellent laws of, 284; 
Fish and Game Protective Association, 
385; Game Commission, 253; protects 
wood-duck, 28; State Board of Agricul- 

Megan'tic Club, 360. 

Meloy, Andrew D., 388. 

Merkel, Hermann W., 227. 

Mershon, W. B., 11, 49. 

Mesa Verde National Park, 344. 

Mexico, 169; elephant seals of, 41; vSierre 
Madre of, 157. 

Meyer, A. H., 129. 

Mice and rats destroyed by owls, 224. 

Michigan, 43, 49, 59, 157; deer killed in, 
172; good laws of, 285. 

Migratory birds, federal protection de- 
manded for, 266. 



Miles, George W., Indiana Game Com- 
missioner, 47. 
Miller, Frank M., on wood-duck, 48. 
Miller, H. N., 49. 

Milliners' Association, American, 307. 
MilUnery, bird extermination for, 115. 
Miners as game destroyers in Wyoming, 

51. 
Minnesota, 43, 49, 106, 157; deer killed in, 

172; National Game Preserve in, 341; 

new laws needed in, 285. 
Mississippi, 43, 105, 106, 165; deer killed 

in, 172; new laws needed in, 286. 
Missouri, 44, 49, 59, 106; new laws needed 

in, 286. 
Mitchell, Consul Mason, and the takin, 

191. 
Mitchell, W. I., 317. 
Monachus tropicalis almost extinct, 39. 
Monal pheasant skins, 197. 
Money, need for, 257, 393, 394, 397. 
Mongoose pest in various islands, 332. 
Montana, 44, 49, 59, 158; grizzlies of, 178; 

National Bison Range, 180; National 

monuments of, 344; new laws needed in, 

287; state game preserves, 348, 349. 
Monuments, National, full list of, 344. 
Moody, C. S., 43, 47. 
Moore, John D., 290. 
Moose, in Alaska, 176; increasing in New 

Brunswick, 52, 175; in Glacier Park, 340; 

in the United States, 175; season in 

Wyoming, 51. 
Mosquitoes eaten by quail, 221. 
Moth, codling, 210, 214; gypsy, 211. 
Mt. Olympus National Monument, 340. 
Mulberry, Russian, as food-tree for birds, 

379. 
Murder of wild animals, 34. 
Museum, American, 388; Carnegie, 391; 

Field, 391; Milwaukee Public, 389; of 

Comparative Zoology, 390; United 

States National, 390. 
Musk-Ox, previous slaughter of, 176. 

Napier, Ernest, 50; arouses New Jersey 

against machine guns, 289; portrait, 

251, 253. 
Nash, C. W., 52. 

National Academy of Sciences, 391. 
National measures for wild-life protection, 

266. 
National Museum, United States, 36, 37, 

390. 
National organizations of New York City, 

254. 
National Zoological Park, 391. 
Natives, rights of, in game, 384. 
Nebraska, 44, 49, 59, 106; protection for 

extinct game in, 287. 



INDEX 



407 



Needs of wild-life caus€^, greatest, 393. 
Negroes, song-bird slaughter b^•, in the 

South, 108, 109, 110. 
Nelson, E. W., 35. 

Nepal, ilestruction of pheasants in, 191). 
Nets used in taking pigeons, 12, 13. 
Nevada, 44, lOtt; new laws needed in, 288. 
New Brunswick, 45, 152, 157; game laws 

of, 357. 
Newfoundland, 157. 
New Hampshire, 44, 49, 59, 157; deer 

killed in, 172; new laws needed in, 288. 
New Jersey, 28, 44, 49, 59, 115, 253; deer 

killed in, 172; few new laws needed in, 

288; game commissioner, 253. 
New Mexico, 44, 59, 106; good game laws 

in, 289; National monuments of, 344. 
New South Wales, birds destroyed in, 233. 
New York, 44, 49, 59, 115, 157, 165; 

Acadmy of Sciences, 391 ; Conservation 

Commission, 252; deer killed in, 172; 

excellent laws of, 289; nuisance law of, 

235; protects wood-duck, 28; state game 

preserve of, 347. 
New York City formerly a "fence," 68; 

wild deer in, 91. 
News, Buffalo, 263. 

Newspapers, value of, in campaigns, 262. 
New Zealand game preserves, 368; red deer 

in, 327. 
Niagara Falls, swans swejit over, 93. 
Nice, Margaret M., 220. 
Nicol, G. H., 48. 
Nighthawk as insect-destrover, 21(i; shot 

for food, 216, 218. 
Niobrara Bison Range, 180. 
Nooe, Bennet, 222. 
Norboe, R. M., 317. 
Norris, Governor Edward F., 348. 
North, Paul, 50. 

N(3rth American, Philadelphia, 263. 
North Carolina, 44, 50, 105, 106; deer 

killed in, 172; hopeless condition of, 292; 

private preserves in, 360. 
North Dakota, 44, 50, 106; new laws 

needed in, 293. 
Norton, Arthur H., 43, 48. 
Nova Scotia, 45, 52; game laws of, 357. 
Nuisances, wild animals may become, 234. 

Observer, Utica, 263. 

Ohio, 44, 50, 106; hopeless condition, 293. 

Oklahoma, 44, 50, 106; bison in, 341; new 

laws needed in, 294; new code of game 

laws needed, 294. 
Oldys, Henry, on sale of game, 307; on 

value of game, 309. 
Olympus, Mount, 340. 
Ontario, 45, 52, 157: game preserves of, 

351. 



Opposition, to game protection in Penn- 
sylvania, 346; in Montana, 348; to 
legislation, how to meet, 264. 

Oregon, 44, 50, 106, 125, 165; grizzlies of, 
178. 

Oriole, 222; destroy cotton-boll weevil, 
216, 217. 

Orlady, Judge, decision of, 147. 

Ornithologist, case of the, 57; Italian, kills 
song birds for food, 98. 

Osborn, Prof. Henry Fairfield, 128, 247, 
254, 389. 

Otter, sea, 193. 

Outdoor Life magazine, 48, 74, 166, 263, 
272. 

Outdoor World magazine, 206, 263. 

Outing magazine, 263. 

Owl, barn, 224; great horned, 80, 225; 
long-eared, 224; screech, SO. 

Owls, general status of, 224; horned, in 
British Columbia, 356. 

Pacific bird refuges, 339. 

Page wire fence, 371. 

Palmer, Theodore S., 248; circular on Na- 
tional Reserves, 345 ; deer statistics from, 
172; game laws proposed by, 46; Olym- 
pus National Monument, 340; on ante- 
lope, 159; on laws, 387. 

Paradise, birds of, being exterminated 
119, 121, 122, 124, 125; greater bird of", 
113, 115, 119. 

Parakeet, Carolina, 9, 16; i)urple Guade- 
loupe, 16. 

Parasitic infection of ducks, 86. 

Parents, duty of, 376. 

Park, Crater Lake, 343; General Grant, 
341; Laurentides, 354; Mt. Rainier, 343; 
Piatt, 344; vSequoia, 344; Sully Hills, 
344; Yosemite, 343. 

Parliament, British, 135. 

Parrot, Yellow-Winged Green, 16. 

Patagonia, guanaco in, 169. 

Peabody, James W., text book bv, 377. 

Pearson, t. Gilbert, 28, 44, 50, 107, 291; 
portrait, 251. 

Pelican Island bird sanctuary, 277. 

Pellett, F. C, 48. 

Penalties, schedule of, 2. 

Pennock, C. J., 47. 

Pennsylvania, 44, 50, 105, 115, 157, 253; 
aliens may not own firearms, 103; de- 
cision on automatic guns, 147; deer 
killed in, 172; game wardens killed, 103; 
new laws needed by, 295; state game 
preserves, 345. 

Penrose, Dr. C. B., 45, 50. 

Pests, introduced species that have be- 
come, 330. 

Petrel, Black-Capped, 21. 



408 



INDEX 



Phalaropes, 229, 230. 

Pheasants, being exterminated, 118, 119, 
124; blood, 196; English, value of in 
market, 69; impeyan, 196; introduced 
species of, 325; not bud-eaters, 326; 
shipped from China to England, 200; 
shipped at Hankow, China, 69. 

Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, 391. 

Phillips, John JM., 2.54; educational cam- 
paign in schools by, 378, 381; on goats 
killed for food, 70; Pennsylvania Game 
Commissioner, 345; portrait, 255. 

Photographing live game, code of ethics 
on, 385. 

Pickhardt, Carl, on caribou slaughter, 69. 

Pierce, Ray V., private game preserve of, 
360; sambar deer acclimatized by, 373. 

Pigeon, Band-Tailed, 22, 273; Passenger, 
9, 11, 12; Victoria crowned, 113. 

Pinchot, Gifford, 267, 341. _ 

Pinnated Grouse disappearing, in Kansas, 
48; Nebraska, 49; Montana, 49; Min- 
nesota, 49. 

Pioneer, value of game to the, 2. 

Pittsboro, disgrace of, by robin slau'ter, 222. 

Pittsburgh, City ornithologist of, 381; il- 
legal sale of game in, 67. 

Plague-spots for sale of game, 279. 

Plant-lice in wheat, 210. 

Platform, Sportsman's, 384. 

Piatt National Park, 344. 

Plover, black-bellied, 228, 230; golden, 18, 
31, 228, 230; upland, 20, 31. 

Plume-hunters, 26, 28. 

Post, New York Evening, 263. 

Posting farm lands advised, 233. 

Potato-bug bird, 223. 

Pot-hunter defined, 446. 

Poultry destroyed by hawks and owls, 224. 

Predatory wild animals, 73. 

Preserve, every National forest should be 
a game, 267. 

Preserve, Alberta, 352; Angoniland, 367; 
Athi Plains, 367; British Columbia, 352; 
Budonga Forest, 367; Duck Mountain, 
354; Elephant Marsh, 367; Freycinet's 
Peninsula, 368; Grand Canyon, 343; 
Hargeis, 367; Jubaland, 367; Kangaroo 
Island, 368; Little Barrier Island, 368; 
Luangwa, 368; Manitoba, 354; Mirso, 
367; Nweru Marsh, 368; Ontario, 352; 
Pennsylvania State, 347; Riding Moun- 
tain, 354; Rustenburg, 368; Sabi-Pon- 
gola, 368; Snow Creek, 348; Spruce 
Woods, 354; Superior National Game, 
341; Swaziland, 368; Teton, 348; Toro, 
367; Turtle Mountain, 354; Wichita, 
341; Wilson's Promontory, 368. 

Preserved game, murdering, 273, 274. 

Preserves, private game, 358, 360; private 
and public interests in, 361. 



Press, duty of Italian, 103; New York, 
263; value of, in campaigns, 262. 

Prichard, W. H. H., on guanaco, 169. 

Prospectors, license given to, 176. 

Protection, accepted by antelopes, 313; 
bears, 313; mule deer, 313; song-birds, 
314; chipmunks, 315; of shore-birds, 232. 

"Protected" game, sale of, forbidden, 67. 

Protective Association, Wild Life, 257. 

Prince Consort of England, 327. 

Prince Edward Island, 45, 52; breeding 
foxes on, 374. 

Prince, German Crown, 359. 

Ptarmigan, Norway, eaten in Chicago, 69. 

Publicity in campaign work, 262; value of, 
393. 

Puma as a game-destroyer, 78, 79. 

Pumas destroyed in British Columbia, 356. 

Pump guns, 144; campaign against, won 
in New Jersey, 289. 

Quagga, extinct, 35. 

Quail, 89, 90; food habits of, 219; portrait 
of, 221; protection recognized by, 316; 
failures in restocking with, 328; Califor- 
nia Valley, very scarce, 47; Egyptian, 
69; feeding, 89; introduced, 329; killed 
in 1909-10 in Louisiana, 5; killed by 

Quebec, 45, 157, 158, 354. 
Quetico Forest Reserve, 352. 

Rabbit plague, 85, 331. 

Rabbits, 53; killed in Louisiana, 5; intro- 
duced on Laysan Island, 142. 

Rangoon, pheasant plumage seized in, 198. 

Ranier National Park, 343. 

Rainey, Paul J., 177. 

Rats and mice destroyed by owls, 224. 

Reasons against sale of game, 310. 

Recreation Magazine, 109, 263, 318. 

Refuges, National bird, 345. 

Red deer, introduced in New Zealand, 327 ; 
of Europe, 372. 

Reed, Elizabeth A., 219. 

Remington Arms Co., 144, 146. 

Renshaw, Graham, 35. 

Republican, Springfield, 263. 

Resident game-butchers, 69, 70. 

Rhea being exterminated, 119. 

Rhinoceros, great Indian, 189; white, 186. 

Rhodesian fauna, 186. 

Rhode Island, 45, 50, 59; new laws needed 
in, 295. 

Rhytina, extinction of, 36. 

Rice, Jr., James H., 45. 

Riding Mountain Game Preserve, 354. 

Rifles in hands of boys, 376. 

Rinderpest in Africa, 83. 

Roberts. Mrs. Mary G., of Tasmania, 38. 



m 



INDEX 



409 



Robin slaughter, in Pittsboro, N. C, 222; 
by Italians, 102; by negroes, 105; in 
eight ■ southern states, 105; in Texas, 
106; in Tennessee, 107; in Louisiana, 
108. 

Robins, food of, 109; killed by cats, 75, 
76, 81. 

Robinson, Arthur, on automatic guns, 152. 

Roccolo, Itahan, for catching birds, 95, 97. 

Rochester Academy of Sciences, 391. 

Rocky Mountain Park, 352. 

Rod and Gun in Canada, 66, 263, 374. 

Rod and Gun Club of Sheridan, Wyoming, 
385. 

Rogers, Josiah, 340. 

Roosevelt, Kermit, 186. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 142, 249, 341. 

Rose, John ]., 102. 

Rothschild, Walter, 14, 17, 137. 

Rubber culture and wild life, 192, 201. 

Ruffed Grouse, 65, 317. 

Rush, Frank, 342. 

Sage Grouse in California, 47. 

Sage, Mrs. Russell, gifts bj', to cause of 
bird protection, 395. 

Sale of game, plague spots for, 279; pro- 
posed for California, 361; suppress, 
the, 306, 312. 

Salt Lake, mortality in ducks on, 87. 

Sambar deer, 372. 

Sanctuaries, demand for forest reserve, 267. 

Sanctuaries in India, 190. 

Sandhill Crane nearly extinct in Alberta, 
51. 

Sandpipers, 229, 230; killed for food, 68; 
Bartramian, 20; pectoral, 18; red- 
breasted, 18, 31. 

Sandwichmen employed in London, 128. 

Sanford, L. C, 20. 

Saskatchewan, 45, 165. 

Sauter, Frederick, 84. 

Scab in Mountain Sheep, 83. 

"wScatter" rifle for ducks, 60, 153. 

Schlcmmer, Max, 137. 

Sconce, Harvey J., 47. 

Scott, Thomas H., 340. 

Sea-lion accepts protection, 317. 

Seal, California Elephant, 40; West Indian, 
in New York Aquarium, 39. 

Sea otter, 52. 

Seaman, Frank, phoebe birds of, 317. 

Sentiment in preservation of game, 244. 

Sequoia Park, 344. 

Seton, Ernest T., 19, 85; map of elk bv, 
163, 165. 

Sharp-shinned hawk, 225. 

Shea plumage bill, 291. 

Sheep, big-horn, 71; next species to be- 
come extinct, 161; killed by pumas, 78; 
in Colorado, 272; present status of, 161 ; 



in Lower California, 162, 169; in Gla- 
cier Park, 340; domestic, 273; curse of 
cattle and game, 335; opposition from 
owners of, 348. 

Sheep-herders of Wyoming, 50. 

Sheep, black, lumpy-jaw in, 83, 84. 

Sheep owners exterminating Thylacine, 38. 

Shields, G. O., 58, 351; protects birds of 
New York City, 101. 

Shield's Magazine, 203. 

Shikar Club of London, 384. 

Shiras, 3rd, George, 306. 

Shikaree, new status of native, 188. 

Shooting game in preserves, 358, 359. 

Shore birds, becoming extinct, in Montana, 
49 ; Kansas, 48 ; Massachusetts, 48 ; Mich- 
igan, 49; New York, 49; North Dakota, 
50; South Carolina, 50; Texas, 50; Wis- 
consin, 51; general status of, 227, 233; 
killed in Louisiana, 5; disappearing, 30. 

Shore, W. B., on elk shipments, 166. 

Shrike, 80. 

Skunk as bird destroyer, 78. 

Slaughter-grounds for wild fowl, 64. 

Slaughter, of wild fowl in North Carolina, 
311; of non-game birds in North Caro- 
lina, 292; in Tennessee, 296; of deer in 
Montana, 287; in Louisiana, 5; of geese 
in California, 148; of band-tailed pi- 
geons, 22, 273; of protected chamois, 
321; of song birds in New York City, 
101; of starving elk, 90. 

Sloanaker, J. L., on pinnated grouse, 47. 

Smith, Charles L., 317. 

Smith, Lee H., 390. 

Smyth, C. H., 43, 48. 

Snakes as bird destroyers, 81. 

Snares for pheasants, 197. 

Snipe, Jack, portrait of, 230. 

Snow Creek antelope preserve, 2; game 
preserve, 348. 

Society, Auciubon, National, 5ee Audubon; 
Roj^al, for the Protection of Wild Birds, 
127, 128, 135, 143. N. Y. Zoological, 
see Zoological Society. 

South America, 169. 

South Carolina, 45, 50, 105, 106; [deer killed 
in, 172; almost hopeless condition of, 
296; private preserves in, 360. 

South Dakota, 45, 50, 59; few laws needed 
by, 296. 

Sparrow pest, 334. 

Sparrows consume weed-seeds, 223. 

Spoonbill, Roseate, 20. 

Sportsman, case of a, 57; character of true, 
54, 58, 64; definition of a, 382. 

Sportsman's Platform, 384. 

Sportsman's Review, 363. 

Sports Afield, 263. 

Sprague, John F., 48. 

Spruce Woods Game Preserve, 354. 



410 



INDEX 



I 



Squirrel, fox, extinct in New York, 44; 
gray, in danger, 32 ; red, as bird destroyer, 
79. 

Squirrels killed in Louisiana, 5. 

Standard-Union, Brooklyn, 263. 

Stanford, Harry P., 49; on deer slaughter, 
287. 

Staley, Walter C, 50. 

Star, Washington, 263. 

States, a roll-call of the, 263. 

State game preserves, 345 ; New York, 347 ; 
Pennsylvania, 347. 

Stratton, James W., 50. 

Stebbing, E. P., 190, 196. 

Stephan, S. A., agent for Carl Hagenbeck, 
372. 

Stevens Arms Co., 144, 146. 

Stevenson-Hamilton, Maj. J., of the Trans- 
vaal, 177, 248; on status of the settlers, 
365; on Sportsman's Platform, 385. 

Stilt, 230. 

Stokes fund, Caroline Phelps, 395. 

Stone, Witmer, 45, 50, 391. 

St. Vincent Island game preserve, 360. 

Sully Hills National Park, 344. 

Sunday gun, 153. 

Sunken Lands of Arkansas, 271. 

Sun, New York, 263. 

Superior National Game Preserve, 341. 

Supreme Court decision, 3. 

Swan, Trumpeter, 19. 

Swans swept over Niagara Falls, 93. 

Swallows, as insect destroyers, 216, 218. 

Switzerland, chamois slaughter in, 322. 

Tagging game for sale, 370. 

Taming wild birds and mammals, 314. 

Taylor, W. P., 47. 

Taylor, W. J., 374. 

Teachers, duty of, 377. 

Teaching wild life protection to the young, 
376. 

Telegraph wires, birds killed by, 77. 

Tener, Governor, at Carrick, Pa., 380. 

Tennessee, 45, 105, 106, 107, 252; a ref- 
ormation needed in, 296; Game Commis- 
sioner of, 252. 

Tern, Common, 113. 

Terns and Gulls saved by Audubon people, 
320. 

Terns becoming extinct in Delaware, 47; 
in North Carolina, 50. 

Teton Game Preserve, 348. 

Texas, 45, 50, 105, 106; insects destroyed 
by birds, 216; laws needed in, 297. 

Text-books, 377 ; duty of writers of, 378. 

Thayer John E., 24, 395. 

Thome, Samuel, 395. 

Thylacine of Australia disappearing, 38. 

Tibet, 190. 

Tilcomb, John W., 51, 240, 242. 



Timber in National forests not to be cut, 

338. 
Times, New York, 263. 
Tinkham, H. W., 231. 
Tobacco pest, 212. 
Tomalin, Richard W., 233. 
Tortoises, 17. 

Toucan, toco, being exterminated, 118. 
Toumay, James W., 392. 
Towne, S. G., 49. 
Townsend, C. V. R., 371. 
Townsend, Charles C, on protected 

ducks, 318. 
Townsend, C. H., elephant seals taken by, 

40. 
Tragopans, 196. 
Trapper uses game for bait, in Wyoming, 

72. 
Trappers as game destroyers, 193. 
Trapping grizzly bears strongly opposed, 

177. 
Traps on Burma-Chinese border, 198. 
Treaty, international, for protecting mi- 
gratory birds, 354. 
Triangle Islands, seals on, 39. 
Tribune, New York, 263. 
Trogon being exterminated, 118. 
Trophies, purchase and sale of, 383 
Trout caught near Spokane, 205. 
Trouvelot, Leopold, introducer of gypsy 

moth, 331. 
Truck crops, 212. 
Tuna Club, angling ethics of, 144. 
Turkey vulture incident on Long Island, 

91; eaten by Italians, 101. 
Turkey, Wild, in South Carolina, 50; 

Texas, 50; Missouri, 49. 
Turner, J. P., 52. 
Turtle Mountain Game Preserve, 354. 



Union and Advertiser, 263. 

Union Fire-Arms Co., 144, 146. 

United States Government, recent work 

in game protection by, 249, 266. 
Upp, Thomas M., 81. 
"Useful Birds and Their Protection," 75. 
Utah, 45, 51, 59, 106; new laws needed in, 

298; national monuments of, 344. 

Vancouver Island, elk on, 165. 

Vanishing species not always recoverable, 
323. 

Van Kennan, E. A., 290. 

Venezuela, a plume-hunter in, 129; wild 
birds' plumage from, 122. 

"Vermin" destructive to birds, 78. 

Vermont, 45, 51, 59, 157; deer killed in, 
172; deer killed in Vermont since 1897, 
240; few new laws needed in, 298; man- 
agement of deer in, 240-242; protects 



INDEX 



411 



wood-duck, 28; re-stocking, with deer, 

240. 
Viquesncy, J. A., 51. 
Virginia, 45, 51, 10(5, 109; deer killed in, 

172; many new laws needed in, 298. 
V^reeland, Frederick K., 353. 

Wagner, George E., 51. 

Wallace, Dillon, 245; estimates 3,500 sheep 

in Colorado, 161. 
Wallace, John H., Jr., 46, 253, 268; on 

Florida laws, 277. 
Wapiti, 164; in Mt. Olympus National 

Monument, 340 {see also, Elk). 
Ward, Charles Willis, 255, 349, 395; donor 

of bird preserve, 319. 
Ward, Henry L., 51, 389; seals discovered 

by, 39. 
Warden service based on merit system, 

301. 
Wardens, game, 60; killed on duty, 103; 

number of salaried, 237. 
Ward-Mcllhenny Wild Fowl Preserve, 361 . 
Waterton Lakes Park, 352, 353. 
Washington, 45, 59, 165; grizzlies in, 178; 

a new code of law^s needed in, 298. 
Wayne, Arthur T., 133. 
Weasel, 78, 317. 

Webber, F. T., on Colorado uail, 89. 
Webster, F. M., 214, 381. 
Webster, Frederic S., 381. 
Weed seeds eaten by quail, 219, 220. 
Weeks, J. W., bird bill of, 267, 306. 
Weevil, cotton-boll, 215, 216, 221. 
Western Districts Game and Trout Pro- 
tective Association, 185. 
Western Field, 263. 
West Virginia, 45, 51; deer killed in 172; 

good conditions in, 298; protects wood- 
duck, 28. 
Wharton, William P., 43, 49, 253; bison 

census by, 180. 
Wheat, losses on, 209, 210. 
Whipple, James S., 250. 
Whitney, Caspar, 131. 
Whooping Crane extinct, 49; in Manitoba, 

52. 
Wichita National Bison Herd, 178, 294. 
Wichita National Game Preserve, 341. 
Wilcox, Albert, 395; bequest from, 256. 
Wild fowl, 48; slaughter grounds, 64; 

refuge, Louisiana State, 344. 
Wildebeest in Cape Colony, 185. 
Wild Life Call, 388. 
"Wild Life in Australia," 332. 
Wild Life Protectiv^e Association, 152, 257. 
Wilderness area of North America, 156; 

game will disappear from, 163. 
Willet, 13, 31. 
Williams, A. Bryan, British Columbia 

game warden, 52, 178, 356. 



Wilson, Mrs. Minnie Moore, 16. 

Wilson, Alexander, on the passenger 
pigeon, 12. 

Wilson, Erasmus, on quail feeding, 89; on 
Carrick's bird day, 379. 

Wilson, Governor Woodrow, signs bill 
against machine guns, 289. 

Wilson, James, Secretary of Agriculture, 
343. 

Winchester Arms Co., 144, 146, 150. 

Wind Cave Bison Range, 180, 390. 

Wisconsin, 45, 51, 59, 157; deer killed in, 
172; new laws needed in, 301. 

Woburn Park, David's deer at, 36. 

Wolves destroyed, 79; in British Columbia, 
356. 

Wombat in list of fur-bearers, 193. 

Women promote bird slaughter, 7. 

Wood, George E., 49. 

Wood, Lieut.-Col. William, 355. 

Woodcock, 30, 49, 50, 51, 52. 

Wood-Duck, 28; eaten in seventeen States, 
29; disappearing in Louisiana, 48; nest- 
ing in Zoological Park, 207. 

Woodpecker, Downy, 214, 226; golden- 
winged, 226; hairy, 226. 

Woodpeckers, food of, 226. 

Wooley-Dod, Arthur G., 51. 

Wool-Growers' Association, 2; opposes 
game preserves, 335, 348. 

World, New York, 263. 

Worthington, C. C, 236. 

Wrens destroy boll weevil, 218. 

Wyoming, 45, 51, 59; efforts by, to feed 
starving elk, 166; elk case, 71 ; deer, 158; 
grizzlies, 178; laws needed, 302; succor 
of elk in, 337; National Monuments in, 
344; State Game Preserve in, 348. 



Yale University, 392. 

Yalakom Game Preserve, British Colum- 
bia, 354. 

Yellowstone Park, animals in, 336; bison 
herd of, 180; elk in, 165; protected an- 
imals of, 313. 

Yoho Park, 352. 

Yosemite National Park, 343. 

Yukon Territory, sale of game in, 357. 

Zebra, Burchell's, extinct, 37; in Cape 
Colony, 185. 

Zoological Park, New York, 19; ducks 
killed in, 92; thylacine in, 38; wood- 
duck, quail and rabbits in, 315, 316; 
woodpeckers decreasing in, 226. 

Zoological Society, New York, 389, 395; 
gift of bison herd from, 178, 294, 341 ; 
on "extermination," 32; protects birds 
of New York City, 101. 

Zoologists, duty of American, 386. 



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